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Showers of Blessing 



Anson D. Eby 



“ Run ye to and fro through the streets and 
see if ye can find a man.” 


The Bible. 


Lancaster, Pa. 
1908 







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INTRODUCTION. 

Although this book is the author’s first production, others 
have preceded it into publication. The main purpose of the 
book is to depict the sunbeams that shine from the heart of 
mankind, together with the shadows that fall from it when 
shadows fall. Both day and night are phenomena of the hu- 
man breast, and one deserves to be treated as justly as the 
other. So if in perusing this volume, one can obtain a grain 
of thought, a nugget of joy, a drop of love, a gem of truth, a 
gift of pity, or a thread of morality, it will not have been ad- 
vanced in vain, nor its lessons an idle fancy of a dreaming 
brain. 


A. D. Eby. 



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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. A Glance at the Home 9 

II. Portraits of the Family i6 

III. The Sounding of Two Hearts 23 

IV. The Ogden Household 34 

V. A Heavy Summons Greets Morris 41 

VI. A Broken Vow 51 

VII. Morris and Amos 60 

VIII. Jove on a Rampage 68 

IX. A Day With Thought and Sorrow 74 

X. The Spice of Dove Seasons Sadness 82 

XI. From Noonday Joy to Midnight Anguish 91 

XII. Troubles of the Home 98 

XIII. A Sorrowful Departure • ... 106 

XIV. A Spring Night of Midsummer Grief 1/5 

XV. Grief the Jailor of a Heart 122 

XVI. Guided by Revenge 134 

XVII. Passing of a Soul 141 

XVIII. Was It An Hallucination ? 149 

XIX. Other Two Dovers 156 

XX. The Source of Ruin 163 

XXI. The Eruption of a Heart 171 

XXII. A Soul Daid Open 181 

XXIII. A Sad Return 189 

XXIV. Cleft Hearts Again Made Whole 197 

XXV. Ended Almost a Tragedy 206 

XXVI. “ Brimful of Sorrow and Dismay.” 214 

XXVII. Dife the Slave of Time 222 

XXVIII. Toward The Abyss 228 

XXIX. Tha Strangest Scene of All 235 

XXX. Sailing the Matrimonal Sea 243 

XXXI. ‘‘A Most Incomparable Man.” 250 

XXXII. The Rider of the Pale Horse 255 

XXXIII. Dight Out of Darkness 261 


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SHOWERS OF BLESSING 


CHAPTER 1. 

A GLANCE AT THE HOME. 

In eastern Pennsylvania some eighty years ago, a house 
stood in a prominent locality. It seemed to have been modeled 
from a dream of fancy, as it was large, built of brick, beauti- 
ful for a country farm house, and was new, neat, plain, invit- 
ing and inspiring. On one end adjacent to the peak was an 
oblong tablet of marble on which was engraven the year when 
the structure was founded. A wide portico extended along 
the east end and south side, enclosed by a piazza arabesqued 
with vines. The lawn was trimly supplied with walks coned 
with comely cedars, and adorned with quincunxs of beautiful 
flowerage. Another walk paved with large square slabs of 
stone extended northward to the barn. The walk was beneath 
an espalier, which was canopied by an array of grape vines. 
This arbor of topiary spruceness gave promise of shade in 
summer, grapes in autumn, and wines in winter. Then east of 
the barn lay a promising orchard, sweet oasis of Pomona. In 
spring this woody tract supplied the insects honey from its 
blossoms ; in summer it afforded pasturage for the heifers : in 
autumn it furnished the household cider from its apples; 
in winter it provided a retreat for the quail and rabbit. 
The barn itself was an immense building, one of those colossal 
structures remarkable for this section of the country. It was 
a Parthenon for the products of the soil, the harvests of the 


9 


farm, the implements of the estate, and served further as a 
protection for the live stock. Also some distance north of the 
barn, and adjoining the road, was a vast woods, which had 
dwindled down from a forest. 

Yet a busy afternoon in May added to this scene. The 
earth was welcoming the fervid sunshine, the air was balmy 
with perfumes, the breezes from the west gently oscillated the 
foliage, and the bushes were nodding in the zephyrs. The 
greensward had already acquired its color, purchasing from 
the millions of blades its price of verdure. With verdant 
leaves the trees were now bedizened, the cherry trees hastening 
on the fulness of their fruit, the orchard was a swaying archi- 
pelago of emerald, and the locust were with snowy clusters 
fragrant. The bees were pillaging the flowerets, or by their 
droning, idle hum and drowsy buzz, bore forth their weird en- 
chantment in sonorous song. Tawdry butterflies were hover- 
ing above the flowers, and a trembling rosette of yellow ones 
glistened on a humid blot along the roadside. The tap of the 
woodpecker on a distant oak probed the air with a rolling 
sound, while the chirp and twitter of birds filled the atmo- 
sphere. The fowls in the farmyard were also enjoying their 
festival of merriment, the whole feathered crew at their noisy 
carnival. Yet there the turkey gobbler, vain autocrat of the 
farmstead, and the peacock, saucy Czar of the fowl’s dominion, 
were endeavoring to maintain authority over the entire tribe of 
the gizzard. An occasional cackle in the barn identified the 
promise of a fresh laid egg, endorsed at intervals by a pro- 
longed crow. Bleating sheep and grazing kine were scattered 
over the adjacent hillslopes and verdurous meadows. And 
fleecy clouds were sailing in the atmosphere, and on the hazy 
horizon toward the west, where a ridge of hills overlooked a 
valley of arable land through which a sinuous stream in silent 
indolence was flowing. 

In truth, this was one of the most beautiful estates in the 
community.: It was the heau ideal of home, a landscape that 


10 


would have called Rembrandt forth with brush in hand or 
Shakespeare with his pen. 

Im the midst of this scene an aged man was approaching the 
house. Also at the same instant an elderly woman appeared 
from the garden. She had been contending with the soil and 
weeds and vegetation, and was retiring to the porch where 
she was joined by the man who had now arrived, and who was 
her husband. This aged couple were the old folks at home, 
Cyrus Felton and Sarah, his wife. 

“What have you been following that you appear so taxed 
with heat?” the wife began. 

“I have been viewing the estate to ascertain the promise of 
the crops,” returned the husband. “The maize is flourishing 
and the fields are beautiful with the rows of green by which 
they are adorned. And now that the cultivator is at work, it 
makes one surmise that with a moderate season our fertile 
acres will prosper bountifully. The condition of the soil is 
prime and the boys are perfonning graceful work. Blessed 
days are these, and the spears of all that is green rise up to be 
caressed by the mildness of the sun.” 

“You approached from the pasture tract,” she observed. 
“You must have taken a wide survey through this fond rain 
of warmth, that you appear from this opposite direction.” 

“True,” he followed, “it was a goodly stroll in this unusual 
early sultryness. Really the sun comes down in a fusillade of 
heat. But the fields of com inspected, I proceeded to the tim- 
ber where the genial umbrage gave me comfort. From thence 
I did invade the meadow, meandering with the brook. The 
pasture has been benefited by the showers, and now this sun- 
shine deepens the verdure of the grazing ground.” 

The conversation continued longer, and relished mainly on 
the interests pertaining to the farm. 

A space of time elapsed in silence. Reticence held the man, 
absorbing him in a spell of meditation. He was inclining for- 
ward, his arms upon his knees, his head drooping downward. 


II 


and his eyes settled upon the floor. He had entered the quiet 
of reflection. His wife broke not his silence, but allowed him 
to pursue his deliberation. She had also subsided into thought. 

Some time thus departing, the husband became aware of his 
departure from their colloquy, when he turned toward his 
spouse. He again ventured on the trail of speech. 

“Sarah,” he began inquiring, “does our son yet entomb him- 
self in the thought of this Ogden girl ?” 

Thus diverted from herself she glanced up slowly. 

“That subject were better were it dropped,” she returned, 
and followed ; “it were as easy to inquire whether the sun rises 
in the morning, the birds sing through the day, or the stars 
shine at night. I could answer as easily. Morris will con- 
tinue to love her so long as love is on the earth. But you mis- 
represent your statement. Thinking of her his thoughts are 
entertained by the sublime, the very heaven of delight.” 

“I have not lately caught them in each other’s company, and 
imagined he did modify the fervency of his affections. They 
were meted out to her too freely. So he fails yet to heed my 
request and desist from his lavishments of love to her?” 

“Does a son’s actions, emotions, or even his thoughts escape 
a mother’s notice?” his wife questioned. “Observe the clouds 
of discomfort gather on his countenance, thus essaying to 
darken his cheer. How he begins to wander about, his eyes 
directed downward, his mind rapt in meditation, lost in thought, 
at times confused, his complaining heart suffering at your 
stern command and undue stress of voice. Yes, he is tilted 
toward the very furnace of love for Mary, and all the chiding 
bestowed upon him are as wasted notes. He cannot unloose 
his love which clings to her as life itself. She is the Mecca 
of his thoughts, and never can he sever them from her.” 

“Do you hand me such knowledge,” he said, pushing his 
hand comb-like through his hair. “So Morris defies my ad- 
vice. Is that the kind relief you bring from him to me? I 
repeat it, he must break up his mind upon this matter, and give 


12 


up his designs of love upon this girl. She is not to be termed 
wife by such as Morris.” 

“You do the tender girl much damage. Indeed, such as she 
is, she does a heart possess, a heart that is good, kind and 
true ; a loving heart coupled to a temper that none of her sex 
can claim. Moreover, she is as beautiful as the moon, and that 
beauty is a mirror to all eyes. A gentle tongue is her per- 
fection, and her rich, soft voice is as music to the ear. They 
are thickly clad in love; in faith, to sum their loves it would 
produce a rich amount, and I, therefore, apprehend in her one 
who could make our son happy in the world forever.” 

This punctilio toward the lass who was the target of his con- 
versation offended the veteran of command. 

“Morris is still too familiar with her,” he explained. “From 
her he must divorce himself. The world is wide, let him seek 
out another.” 

Mrs. Felton was shocked at her husband’s seriousness. 

“Cyrus, my husband,” she pursued urgingly, “you should 
speak kindly and not so harshly of Mary. Let the tone of soft- 
ness and of comment from you be heard. Your disposition 
seems to be growing resolute of late, since you feed upon such 
thoughts as would separate our son and her. I might add 
where Mary is, is Morris’s heaven, and apart from her it 
would likely mangle his future heavenly happiness. To their 
banded loves she has his voice and he her voice, and stepping 
so far into promise it were wrong for one to strain apart their 
pledges. I would not rise up in anger and seek to pierce the 
heart of his contentment.” 

The husband and father supposed his quarrel just, but he 
did not appear to be thrice armed. His wife’s benignity and 
cleverness, however, failed as yet to revert the voice of his 
decree. 

“He shall cancel that bond with her and not offer to recoil,” 
he said. “She must never be acknowledged by our son as his 
betrothed; so the sooner he suffocates his life of love which 
lives for her the better for him and us.” 

13 


“It will mar the order of his peace,” said his wife, yet in 
gentle language. “This humble but angelic maid is the light 
in the chamber of his memory ; that extinguished, the brightest 
day will turn as dark as night, as dead as midnight. Her soul, 
her heart, and her virtue make her in complete harmony with 
herself, and she is a glorious prize for our son to draw in the 
lottery of life.” • 

Sarah Felton really knew how Morris’s and Mary’s loves 
were intertwined, and was aware that Morris could not safely 
separate from her, nor send his soul of love to its Valhalla. 

“Looking from certain points, this Mary may be worthy of 
praise,” Mr. Felton imagined. “She may be a motto of beauty 
and thus be a picture. She may be a velvet-lipped minister of 
kindness, and attract folks as roses butterflies, blossoms bees, 
or the moon tides. But there is that that haunts her, that 
alienates her from the best.” 

“I would not bring up the past to gnaw at Morris’s suc- 
cess,” the matron added. “It would seem from you ingrati- 
tude.” 

“Sarah, know you not that this girl’s admission into our 
family by marriage would credit us a blemish ? Let like follow 
like, so that Morris’s selection for life be admired by all, and 
which would even aid to lift our reputation. Morris must 
cease to shower fondness upon this creature, and probably en- 
tice her heart to such a plane of love where it can never be 
returned whole to her again. He must now hope to bend his 
affections from their course, and subvert every league with 
her.” 

This discourse was abruptly broken off at that moment by 
Rudolph Simmerly, a neighbor, who was passing by, and who 
shouted, at the time, some words. Also at this juncture the 
sons appeared from the field and entered the farmyard. The 
parents, on beholding the approach of their sons, retired to the 
cuisine, where the servantess was performing her evening 
avocation. 


14 


The brothers were weary and fatigued, their horses jaded. 
In the mornings their restless equities were usually in good 
condition, and champed their bits eagerly; but nothing so re- 
duces the edge of high feeding in the blooded spirits of a 
soliped than a full day’s printing of their hoofs in the crum- 
bling earth. 

After they had secured their animals, the brothers proceeded 
to the house, where the meal, in readiness, awaited them. 
When all were seated they first extended fervent thanks to the 
Creator for all the blessings of the table — the smiling table 
which so profusely furnished forth the esculent edibles of life. 
The household appeared amiable and in one union bound. 
The meal completed, the boys went about the chores of the 
evening. The sun was retreating toward the horizon, and twi- 
light was stealing on, the cloudless west ruddy with the fading 
messenger of day. 


15 


CHAPTER 11. 


PORTRAITS OF THE FAMILY. 

Let us now regard the members of the family, as our object 
is to follow them and their proceedings. • 

x\ husband and wife and two sons comprised the circle. 

This father and this mother, this husband and wife had 
walked together down the incline of life’s receding footroad, 
the petroleum of fortune lighting their pathway with a brillian*^ 
radiance. The cuticle of their career had become accustomed 
to the weather of life in their early days, so they were not 
menaced by the malady of misfortune in the winter of their 
existence. 

Their lives during their advance had always been happy, 
their hearts true, their souls pure. The kiss of summer or the 
frown of winter were analogous to them, for they took ad- 
vantage of the season mirrored at the present, and never de- 
viated from their bee-line progress. 

Cyrus Felton, the head of this home, was nobly born, his 
father having been a sergeant in the Revolution. At his 
father’s decease, Cyrus became the heir of a fair inheritance, 
and soon met an accomplished young lady, by the name of 
Sarah Morren. This cognizance soon ripened into the gloss of 
affection, which further evolved them in the bond of love, 
and finally led to the altar of marriage. 

So chance had joined their thoughts, nature their loves, God 
their hearts, the minister their hands, and they their lips and 
lives. And thus these blushing pilgrims found their en- 
trance and their station on that ship which sails life’s broad 
and treasured ocean. 


i6 


Cyrus, on his nuptial day, was eight and twenty, and his 
wife was his junior by six years. Their liberal fortunes added, 
established for them a pedestal on which to erect a Pantheon 
of wealth, by which the prolific acres of their farm were the 
source of its enlargement, the abundance of their harvests the 
medium by which it was accomplished. Their coffers of 
wealth doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled, for the attain- 
ment of which end they toiled, they persevered, they hoarded ; 
they knew that a penny saved was a penny earned, yet theirs 
were no niggard hearts nor did they ever miserly scrimp. 

Five children had come to bless their home with love, three 
of whom had already gone beyond. The two yoimgest, who 
remain in life at the time whereof we write, are those who 
complete the periphery of the heart’s lucernal circle. 

Cyrus Felton had now advanced to the age of sixty-eight. 
He was tall and moderately robust. His hair was hanging 
nearly to his shoulders, and his hoary beard was hastening on 
to whiteness. Within this silvered hirsute frame a countenance, 
bronzed by the amorous pinches of the sun and jealous ca- 
resses of the weather, reposed like a portrait in content. This 
hearty, healthy color proved him to be a man inured to the 
parallax changes of climate. He was as hardy as a Scandi- 
navian and vigorous as a Norseman. In winter or summer 
alike, the ozone and the ambrosia of the air were his stimu- 
lants. The air was his physician and administered his medi- 
cine. He had never been so ill that he was forced to resign his 
labors in manhood, nor was he deprived from the benefit of 
his exercise in age; his constitution never capitulated to dis- 
ease. Be it to his credit that he was a granger and a suc- 
cessful one. His eyes were clear, his countenance a halo to 
those eyes. His voice was gentle, touching . as spring, and 
rarely inclined to austerity. With hosts of friends he was 
environed, as all who knew him loved him ; he was welcomed 
as a friend, esteemed as a man, revered as a father, honored as 
a farmer, and admired as a Christian. He was a benefactor of 


17 


his day. He was in thought and word and action pure; he 
never neglected his God in heaven, or his fellowmen on earth ; 
he did not rob Peter to pay Paul. Being master of himself he 
mastered others. In the progress of the community he was the 
pivot, the alert center. The children of the neighborhood — 
those rosy, tender plants of humanity — looked upon him as a 
Linnaeus of humanity. His character was as luminous as a 
star — as Sirius. The ocean of law he refrained from sailing 
on, as he detested its saltiness, its bitterness, its treachery. 
To him the legal profession resembled a lottery, a verbal 
pugilism of chance. 

This king of the farm was familiar with the signs of the 
calendar. He knew the ‘‘up and down” signs of the moon, the 
reigning planet of the year, the rising and the setting of all 
heavenly signs, the proper time to plant and sow, the way to 
drive the weevil from the wheat, the time to profit mostly by 
the pruning knife, and when to eradicate the thorny plants 
that hedged the fences. He was wisely skilled in terraculture, 
arboriculture, viniculture and apiculture. He was his own 
veterinary surgeon, his own machinist, and his own surveyor 
of land. Through his good and noble life he ever bore in mind 
his guiding motto : “He that stops in the valley will never get 
over the hill.” 

What Cyrus Felton was to the barn and farm, to the house 
and home was his devoted wife. She had been, in the flower 
of her days, a bustling little woman, and yet was lithe and 
active. Her compact form was trim, her light hair shaded 
with gray, and concealed beneath a white and tidy linen cap. 
A placid smile usually played upon her face, which seemed to 
hover over her soul like a butterfly over a rose, while her eyes, 
with starry radiance, shone resplendent from their mimic 
heaven. She was as limpid as a mountain spring, with her soul 
portrayed on her countenance, which was with never a film 
clouded. She was tenderly equipped with deeds of love, her 
heart kindly beating forth her pleasantness to all. Solace and 


i8 


gentle eye-drops had she for pity, and a giving hand for charity 
which opened as freely and benignly as the morn. Truth was 
the mark of her virtue as right was of her husband’s honor, 
and there was not the fragment of a cobweb upon the mirror 
of her conscience, not a tainted vapor upon the glass of her 
purity. Her happiness was love, her joy kindness, her de- 
light sympathy, her pleasure assistance, her rapture devotion. 
As a friend her Bible was predominant ; it was her gleaming 
lantern, her guide and counselor, her pathway through the 
meshes of this life. She was merited for the influence she 
manifested over her husband, as she was a staff in enabling 
him to sustain his reputation and his character. She meted 
out to him his scripture food, she' was the measure of his 
religion. 

These benevolent people would frequently drive through the 
community, noting the progress of agriculture. They would 
comment upon the gardenesque appearance of the farms. 
They would also occasionally visit the city, but this was seldom, 
as they derived their greatest happiness from viewing the 
verdant meadows, the flowery trees, the cultivated fields, the 
golden harvests, the stacked grain, the fruitful orchards, the 
frozen rivulets, frescoed trees and bushes, fleecy-roofed build- 
ings, and hoary winter’s white and stainless mantle. 

Almost every Sabbath, seated in their carriage, they were 
proceeding toward the little church, or place of meeting and 
of worship, that sat conspicuously on the hill about a mile and 
a half distant from their house. This house of holiness was the 
text which assisted them in constructing the sermon of their 
lives. It stood like a sentinel of religion ; the Bible was the 
heart, the pulpit its speech. 

This couple, during the quadrennial just passed, had been a 
spur to the community. When the husbandmen were hungry 
for advice, they would hie themselves to Cyrus Felton, and the 
housewives, when thirsty for relief, called on good old “Mother 
Felton,” as she was commonly styled among them. 


Morris Felton, the eldest of the living sons, was six feet 
tall, and as erect and lithe and calloused to endurance as an 
American Indian. He was endowed with superior sttrength, 
but never displayed it ignobly or unmanly. He could hoist 
the greatest weight and elevate the heaviest filled sack upon 
his shoulders. Of doughty feats and pastimes he was crowned 
champion; he was the athlete of the games, the medal his — a 
medal worn in the eyes of his comrades. He also fought the 
purest fight, the fight of truth and right. He was a veritable 
Paul, for truth was in his heart and love in his soul. When- 
ever a task arose or any imbroglio to be unravelled — something 
resembling a Chinese puzzle — the vaunting young men would 
always inquire for Morris Felton. He would cut their Gordian 
knot or sever their Achilles puzzle. In a running leap he com- 
peted with the Arab, equalling George Washington. In the 
wrestling contention he was the foremost gymnast, and James 
Dallon was the self one contestant who proved himself in- 
feasible to Morris’s attempts with the fisticuffs. Yet he alone 
could have worn the Olympian crown or Isthmian garland. His 
features, or, in short, the entire man, bore a resemblance to his 
father. On observing him one looked upon a face, handsome, 
tranquil, with a complexion midway between florid and 
swarthy, the signature of health, set off with eyes black and 
steady, and which constructed a look denoting faithfulness — a 
look inviting as an August moon. A good fyend, honest neigh- 
bor, loving brother, obedient son, faithful companion, and a 
clean associate he was ever found to be. There is a saying : “A 
father is a treasure, a brother a comfort, but a friend is both 
and we find Morris a warm, a constant, a thorough friend ; one 
who never detained his companions in quarantine, but wel- 
comed them as he welcomed slumber. He was the Michael 
Angelo of his associates ; he sculptured their morals. He 
wore the diadem of respect, his brow was set within the crown 
of honesty, which made him not a king, but the soul of equity, 
the heart of friendship, the brain of wisdom. On the field of 


20 


labor he was industrious, and in the circle of society he shone 
quiet and steady as October’s hopeful sun. His sweet temper 
was seldom soured by the vinegar of wrath. His countenance 
was an atlas depicting the general contour of the man, for 
like a mountain peak — an Asiatic one — he towered above his 
fellows in the pure air of prudence. Such was Morris Felton 
at the age of two and twenty. As a school boy he showed an 
aptitude at learning, and was never seen loitering like a tortoise 
to his school. Thus at the age of nineteen he was accounted a 
full ripe scholar, and his schoolmaster secured for him a 
school. But this new venture on the waves of life was not 
compatible with his vis vitae, so he was compelled to dissolve 
himself from this glorious profession. So again he reconciled 
himself unto his father’s farm, but this did not prevent his 
fondness for his books. And thus with pleasure We intro- 
duce the hero of our story. 

Amos Felton was the negative of his brother. He had seen 
twenty birthdays. He was in the flush of health, the glow of 
joy shining from his happy countenance. The measure of his 
joy was full and rounded, full as the moon when she is full, 
heaped like snow on proud Olympus’ top. The buds of 
• rapture burst forth in open blossom on his cheeks, which were 
as rosy as a maiden’s, florid as a rose, as rubicund as a bon- 
fire. That face of his, fresher than the dawn, was like a 
galaxy of flowers, a rosy way over his firmament of pleasure. 
His sport was as florid as his face. He was a genteel, jolly, 
hilarious shoot of personality, more like a chip from some 
foreign block than the ideal one. His gray, darting eyes 
glanced with comic light from out beneath their lashes, like 
twin radiant stars from heaven’s crown. He was an Arthur in 
the romance of love, loving to fatten his eyes on the gayety 
of sights, to feast his ears with the melody of music, to tickle 
his palate with the fumes of wine, and to daub his heart in the 
toilet of woman’s affections. Yet he possessed a kicksy- 
wicksy mode of temperament, and loved a skimble-scamble 


21 


sort of life. He was one of the sons of Comus as well as a 
follower of Bacchus, the height of his glee being to waste his 
nights in revel. He would lose himself amidst money, music, 
maidens, midnight, malmsey, in which cinque of pleasures he 
sported round the pinnacle and at the acme. He was short and 
sinewy. There could not exist a dance in the neighborhood 
that escaped his notice, and he was also in close alliance with 
all the excitant wine and card parties. His mother found it 
impossible to restrain this rollicking lad. He was a sort of 
zebraic human. She often retired nights believing him in the 
land of Morpheus, but he was absorbed in ai¥airs of the ad- 
jacent villakin. In labor he was not exactly noted for his 
promptness, but withal, he was a sort of factotem on the farm. 
His future was full of projects, floating castles of the brain. 
Like on -his face, in his speech, and in his heart, he always 
sought to keep an ample summer in his purse. He was a kind 
of Munchausen among his friends, yet listened to the idle 
stories of quidnuncs. He was what one might denominate a 
rara avis — a prodigy in the gulf of revelry — his love equally 
divided between the buxom lasses and the red-eye. But for all 
his defaults his friends clung round him like a garland round a 
queen. 

We shall learn in the course of this narrative of the esca- 
pades of this wild and reckless lad. 


CHAPTER III. 


THE SOUNDING OF TWO HEARTS. 

It was the next Sunday afternoon. Nature seemed to have 
possession of the Sabbath, and the day was reigning finely, 
for heaven, as well as earth, was asleep. The air was stirring 
slightly, and was almost stagnant. Nothing in motion was in 
range of vision, save an isolated man who had leisurely taken 
his egress from the farmyard, and was walking slowly toward 
the wood. One could not have ascertained whether he was 
being directed by the zephyr of peace, or the gale of annoy- 
ance; one could only have ascertained that he was meditative. 

A robin, furtively hopping along the ground, was disturbed 
by his sudden near approach, and, chirping, spryly took refuge 
in a contiguous cherry tree. 

Pursuing his way, he arrived at the entrance to the wood, and 
entered, where he was beneath the shadows of the sylvan Para- 
dise. The gigantic oaks — stalwart kings of the forest — stood 
like branching pillars, whose leafy domes suspended pendent 
limbs overhead. The scurvy hemlocks, the towering hickories, 
the lofty poplars, the slender chestnuts, and the rotund walnut 
trees pleasantly shadowed the turfy and mossy space beneath. 
He cast an idle eye toward a sportive gray squirrel frisking 
in a viridescent oak, at which moment, a timorous hare was 
aroused from his cosy covert, and departed before the intruder. 
Arriving at the brook, he wound along its rippling course, 
strolling onward beside its margin. 

Presently, some distance before him, on the prostrate trunk 
of a tree, he descried there seated the entrancing figure of a 
female, who appeared to be twenty years of age, or there- 


23 


aboiits. She was attentive of the whirling eddies and dwarfed 
sargassos in the stream. 

Perhaps she was abiding the arrival of this pedestrian, for 
it is but natural with lovers to resort frequently to places where 
their companions in the sweet toils of love are drawn, and if 
so, her expectation was fulfilled ; as these two are none else 
than those in which the tide of love is rising. 

As he, with noiseless step, drew near, she, with that instinct 
of all persons, half turned, and recognized the gentleman, 
who, perhaps, she was anticipating. Proceeding, he ap- 
proached her. 

‘‘Morris, you give me a surprise complete she exclaimed. 
“Yet I was expecting your presence to enjoy.’^ 

“Good afternoon, Mary!” he replied. “You appear to be at 
ease, and your mind calm.” 

“In that you are mistaken,” said she, “as the thoughts of my 
mind were drifting in a little breeze of turmoil.” 

Morris looked pleasantly upon her, but no disorder was 
displayed upon her countenance, no trouble paled the tincture 
of her cheeks. 

“You appear tranquil as the rose, Mary,” he observed. “In 
a word, your present seems a life of roses, for your countenance 
reflects not a glimmer of disturbance.” 

“Do you observe that little whirlpool in the stream?” she 
gently asked, directing with her finger. 

“Yes ! it seems to be a watery heart, drawing in the happi- 
ness of its own watery world.” 

“I was regarding that rotating funnel of the water as you 
approached, and fancied my mind in a similar condition.” 

“Your ideas mislead you, Mary. Observe the stream as far 
as eye can see, and compare this locality to the one farther in 
its course ! there, where I direct this pebble ! Recognize how 
calm — as patient as an .infant’s sleep. Always endeavor to re- 
tain your mind in a poise equivalent to the water slumbering 
there.” 


24 


She focused her attention where he directed and noticed the 
tranquillity of the current. 

“There the water measures deep and is therefore still,” she 
remarked slyly. 

Morris had remained standing, and was now silently watch- 
ing the stillness of the brook, while a corps of thoughts were 
sweeping through his brain. He soon stepped forward, how- 
ever, and seating himself by the side of Mary, on the prostrate 
trunk, began convincingly : 

“Where the water runs smooth, lies placid, or sleeps undis- 
turbed, the stream certainly fathoms deep. So with the mind/ 
for thoughts flow smooth where the mind is deep. You pos- 
sess a noble mind, Mary, one filled with truthful sentiment. 
Cause it to measure deep, and pleasant fancies, so conducive to 
happiness, will flow in a stream of nice contentment.” 

A blush was deeply coloring her countenance. 

“How could I restrain my mind and repress impatient 
thoughts, when I thought you might not come and I be left 
alone ?” 

Through her blush she smiled and he smiled with her. ,- 

As Morris imagined, the mind is comparable to a stream ; it 
flows, frets, fumes, foils, frays, froths, frolics ; it dances gaily, 
tumbles gently, trembles nervously, leaps wildly, plunges 
fiercely, and runs agitatingly ; it darts hither and thither, strug- 
gles, pursues its channel as if exasperated, stops, rests, goes 
tumbling forward, whirls, foams, disappears like Lethe, bub- 
bles forth madly, strengthens, darts forward like a flash, nar- 
rows suddenly, encounters obstacles, falls, tears, rushes in 
advance with violence, broadens, pacifies its ire, sleeps. 

“So now your mind rests sweetly and your heart sits still !” 
he returned lightly. “A disciplined mind usually can partake 
of that essence of calmness and quietude which the ocean 
sometimes requires in the zone of calms. Yet when the ruf- 
fian, Boreas, constructs mountains of its waters — that is sor- 
row. But sorrow cannot find his entrance through a nature 


25 


such as yours, Mary ; then never apprehend your mind in that 
state which is comparable to the foamy foliage of this puny 
maelstorm. Or look at the gentle twinkle of a star, and let 
your mind be likewise !” 

“It is easier for a mouth to speak than a mind to act,” she 
replied, archly, smiling. 

“Your tongue, Mary, is a pendulum of truth, and you the 
clock of understanding,” he said. 

A quintessence of light from her soul beamed from her eyes. 

“My mind has now contentment, since you bring me wel- 
come,” she sincerely followed. “A rapture of my heart has 
succeeded to the cogitation of my mind. Your presence ever 
glads me, loving, as I do, to enjoy your friendship and your 
warmth of heart.” 

To her words were added beauty; to her beauty, blushes; to 
her blushes, smiles ; to her smiles, grace ; and to her grace, 
love. He was pleased. 

“That expression finds ” 

“Look yonder !” exclaimed the girl in a frightened manner. 

Morris followed her eyes with a glance of his own, and 
perceived a serpent with almost half its length extended from 
the water. They both watched the manoeuvers of the rep- 
tile, scarcely venturing to remove their eyes until having 
feasted their intentness upon the horrid length of venom. They 
saw it advance, suddenly stop, its forky tongue darting like 
flashes from between its fangs. 

A slight movement on the part of Mary induced the water 
fiend to sink under the surface of the water. 

“Did you recognize how sharp its thistled tongue protruded 
from its mouth?” she echoed, as the slender serpent vanished. 
“They fix it death to be stung by that most fearful sting. WiM 
the statement bear the truth, Morris?” 

“So attest so many people,” he replied. “But really a ser- 
pent’s tongue is less dangerous, or even poisonous, than a 
human tongue ; for, as Scripture says, the ‘tongue is a fire, a 


26 


world of iniquity/ Yet Shakespeare — the topmost sage of 
literature — declares in his work, of the ‘serpent’s mortal 
sting.’ ” 

“I suppose we must sustain his credit, if such knowledge 
flowed from the seam of his immortal pen ?” 

“Notwithstanding what I have said,” he observed, “and 
however garnished the writhing serpent is, he still wears be- 
neath the varnish of his skin, the venom of a speedy death, 
carrying a special poison in his head like a toad his jewel.’’ 

“My eye does not welcome the serpent. When I observe it, 
I become as chilly as the creeping thing itself.” 

Mary accepted the proposition of Morris for a short stroll 
through the woods. The air beneath the trees was cool and 
embracing. As they walked they talked, chatted, smiled, and 
frequently a rill of laughter escaped the happy girl. They 
traversed through bushes and copses, and walked over mossy 
carpet beneath the verdant ceiling of foliage. They crossed 
and recrossed the brook, fording its shallows, and entered 
glades and nooks where leafy trees hung festoons of shadows. 
The melody of peace filled their souls, the tender thrill of love 
their hearts, the ample drift of leisure thoughts their minds. 

A flying squirrel flitted from one tree to another in advance 
of them ; enormous birds were circling high in the atmosphere ; 
plumy clouds were floating over the cerulean dome ; the 
flowers exhaled perfumes; the pansies bespangled the moss 
in clusters; and the reposing birds occasionally flew, with 
silent throats, before these peaceful lovers. 

And so almost an hour passed away, and their excursion 
had ended, for they returned to the prostrate tree where their 
stroll originated. Again were they seated as an hour previous- 
ly, and, had one observed them there before, as now, their 
little ramble would have to him remained a secret. 

These lovers were not only happy; they were rejoicing; they 
were ecstasy itself. Everything around them, the wood, the 
air, the rivulet, the quiet tenants of the trees, and the solitude, 


27 


subsided them into a like condition, and they were peaceful 
like the woods, fragrant like the air, contented like the birds, 
as oblivious to their surroundings as the reposing world. Love 
— that daybreak of the heart and dawn of real life — was the 
one only condition that made them thus. The melody of their 
loves was as tuneful as a lyre, as inspiring as a song, as per- 
fumed as a flower. Mary’s happiness was espoused to 
Morris’s delight, and Morris’s conquest on her solitude won 
her over to contentment. 

“So you present to me, you, who are the pattern of pure 
love and virtue, your noble heart?” said Morris, after they 
again seated themselves. “You have so unbosomed your love 
that it was a true flood of oratory, seeing that the eloquence 
of love is an oration.” 

“How could it be otherwise !” returned the faithful Mary, 
smiling. “You minister so kindly to my love that I must 
yield my bosom to your demands. Yet I have loved you 
long.” 

An inflorescence of color again bloomed upon her cheeks ; 
her final sentence set it there. 

“My conquest then is drifting toward success,” he argued. 
“Your tenderness and beauty are the very spice and salt which 
seasons the welfare of my life. Sometimes I was mistrustful 
as to your true affection.” 

She glanced at him surprised. 

“You better apprehend the sky green, the sun cold, the earth 
flat, snow black, and black white, rather than suspect my love 
which, as a needle is to the magnetism of your heart.” 

A sudden sound permeated the wood. Love’s ear ir a 
tympanum incessantly open to all sounds. Morris turned, and 
peered in the direction whence it issued. Mary, at the same 
time, turning, glanced toward the locality from whence the 
noise proceeded. Through the gate which Morris had entered 
almost two hours prior an elderly gentleman was appearing. On I 
recognizing him to be his father, Morris’s amazement was 


28 


complete ; he hung his head and was silent. The old man ap 
proached toward the sedentary couple, veered his direction 
westward and pursued his course as if to gain the road. Ar- 
riving at a glade in the wood, he began to take a glimpse of the 
stand of timber, when the immediate progress of his thoughts, 
like his steps, were arrested and postponed by the intervening 
presence of a young and tender couple, seated like a glow of 
happiness within the circle of his observation. The surprise of 
the father was complete, when the recognition of his son and 
dear companion were manifest before him. He surely saw he 
had not yet persuaded Morris to relinquish his love for this 
girl, nor his desire for her company, against which he so pro- 
tested. But the old man continued his walk, and disappeared 
behind a clump of trees. 

The lovers had ventured not a word. Mary observed 
Morris, and noticed shades of disturbance flit across his coun- 
tenance, while her affright was but momentary. 

“Does your father yet desire you to repel the aim of my 
affection ?” she asked. 

“Yes, Mary,’' he replied, “no later than yesternight he 
ventured on the subject and did attack my love. And now, as 
he has unmasked us in the very act of love, his strife will be 
revived.” 

A sigh from her bosom was unfolded — a signal of dissatis- 
faction. 

He said, pursuing: “He would have me banish from you 
my love, and sunder the pleasures of our company.” 

“Can you and your father not successfully arbitrate our 
cause between yourselves?” she inquired with some emotion. 
“My heart belongs alone to you.” 

“Yes, and I will be Gibraltar in defense of that most holy 
love. Really,* Mary, you are a miracle, with blue eyes, that, 
like stars, adorn your countenance, so like a perfect h'=‘aven.” 

“I fancy your black eyes to my blue eyes,” said she mus 


29 


ingly. “I love eyes that are black; I admire them; they are 
so entrancing, so magnetic — almost putting one to sleep.” 

The interference of the father had already faded from their 
memories, and they were again in their own affairs submerged. 
Lovers forget all else except their love. 

^‘Blue,” said Morris, following the subject, “is the noblest 
color the eye can possess, for it signifies enthusiasm, even to 
love. Blue eyes are the diamonds of truth, the stars of 
beauty ; they are the image of heaven. Be proud, Mary, of 
your eyes, as I am proud !” 

“Were it not for your honesty and truth, Morris, I would 
be inclined to think you are favored with an oily tongue, to 
bestow upon me such a compliment !” 

“And that is not all, Mary, I perceive the real flush of na- 
ture, the genuine color of health upon your cheeks, and not 
the dye supplied from the contents of the rouge vessel. The 
tinge of the fluid that through the capillaries run, is the cos- 
metic that sets a rosy taint upon your countenance. Who 
would paint the lily, color the violet, add complexion to the 
rose, beautify the grass, deepen the dandelion, or remodel the 
rainbow ? Surely, my only love would not !” 

“Decidedly not !” cried the one described. “But you desire 
not to compare the mock beauty of my countenance to the 
rose, violet, lily, or the gorgeous arch of heaven? But, 
Morris, the sun ! how the sun recedes ! Accompany me, I must 
homeward win my way, as mother is watching and waiting.” 

As they strolled along, the woods resounded with the merry 
music of their voices. The dancing brook murmured at their 
feet, the sudden plash of a trout mingled with their delight, 
and the fragrant camomile dotted the^ ground beneath the 
galaxy of trees. Mary was dazzled with happiness, Morris 
was radiant with felicity ; she was a star beneath that roof of 
verdure, he a planet. To each other they were resplendent 
as the dawn, crowned with an aureole of loveliness, as they 
had arrived at that period of their endearment where they 


30 


adored each other, and their minds were spry, their hearts gay, 
their souls open. 

They emerged at last from the shadows of their leafy ceil- 
ing, and were standing on the road conversing. Mary’s home 
lay half a mile northward, Morris’s half a mile southward; 
their homes apart did stretch a mile, but not their loves. At 
her request, Morris accompanied Mary a part of her distance 
home. 

“To mq this was a lonesome afternoon made lively,” said 
Mary. “It was spent in pleasure, and this excursion is the 
happiest of my life.” 

“It was, meseems, an expedition also of the heart!” her 
lover followed. “Meditation, when true love presides, is soft- 
ened, care expelled, and the heart is to an oasis turned.” 

Perhaps, Morris, with his knowledge and experience, felt 
in thought that the love of a chaste woman animates a torpid 
brain, vivifies a stagnant heart, enlivens a supine spirit, resus- 
citates a drowned conscience, and often rescues a soul drifting 
toward night. 

“My love, henceforth, cannot be filched by any other,” the 
pleased one tendered. “My heart, the jewel securing my af- 
fection, I convey, Morris, to you, my choice of all the world.” 

While uttering this remark, her face was pleasant with 
smiles, and his love bubbled from his eyes as from Afric’s 
sunny fountains. 

“Those precious words will I wear in my memory as your 
badge of love. Those sayings, flowers dropping from an 
angel’s tender lips, I can carry in my heart like an unfading 
bouquet. As spots upon the leopard or stars in the sky, my 
love for you will never alter. We will invent some stratagem 
to overcome the opposition in this, our course of love; and I 
will somehow induce father to revoke his ideas in this cause 
so he turn into the track of reason.” 

“Now you are speaking valiantly 1 Your courage and your 


31 


patience will lead your father to measure to you justice. I j 
hope you will be constant?” j 

“My heart cannot backslide from one whose bosom is so •, 
full of kindness, nor my soul recede from one who is a bril- : 
liant lamp of purity,” he affirmed. “Mary, you are the non- ■ 
pareil of virtue, tenderness and beauty, a paragon of Eve’s ; 
fair daughters.” 

They had almost reached Mary’s home, when her mother 
appeared at the gate, looked down the road in their direction, 
and, observing them, returned to the house ; while Morris . 
thought it good policy to move timely homeward, as, having 
been discovered by his father in company with her, his con- 
science urged him hence. He informed his partner in love of 
the importance his presence at home denoted, for he would 
have his father conceive his liberty with her as brief as pos- 
sible. 

“Now, I must with haste, haste home,” he concluded. “And 
for proof, I will seal the promise of my love with a zealous 
kiss.” 

He glanced around him. There was no one in sight, and 
she allowed him press his lips against her virgin own. 

“My love is still more recompensed,” pursued she, as he 
was departing, “by this hearty covenant, welcomed from your 
heart, and thus stamped by your magnetic lips.” 

And thus they parted. They seemed satisfied, as their loves 
were reciprocated. They had been frank with words, and 
opened their hearts as well as their mouths. They wended 
their separate ways, looking not around, as if distrustful of 
their loves. Morris came, saw, and conversed with Mary, his 
acquaintance having already grown into friendship, his friend- 
ship now into affection, and this affection into love, deep love, 
passionate love ; for in his imagination he had ever beheld ho; 
a halo by day, and an aureole by night. He now fancied her 
the souvenir of his heart, the present of his life. With his 
mind full of dreamy thoughts, he continued homeward. He 


32 


wore a dazzling glow of peace, and he was a true mariner of 
love, navigating deep below the surface of his countenance. 
His ship of hope drew deep on the loving sea of live. He had 
heard Mary speak from her heart, and saw her smile from her 
soul, which smiles and speech were stimulants to his love. 

A smile is the sunshine from the human sky; it furnishes 
love warmth and light ; it polishes homeliness, disarms malice, 
sharpens friendship, dulls anger, and brightens life; it con- 
verts disorder to peace, hatred to love, revenge to kindness; 
and it depicts upon a homely countenance the gems of sunlight. 
It is free, obtained without price, and gives the wearer no ex- 
pense. A smile is the true apparel for the face, as it decorates 
the visage of man, adorns the features of a child, and to an 
angel transfigures woman. 

It is true the passion of love doubly animates the world for 
the lover. The progress of the evening also enhanced activity 
for this pair. As for Morris, every bird that sang its tender 
anthems, awakened a new life within the portal of his brain. 
Every ripple of noise was an ovation over his success. Every 
fleecy cloud that skirted the firmament, seemed to lavish smiles 
upon him. The rhapsody of the brook was more harmonious 
than formerly. He heard melodious notes in the wind-stirred 
leaves. The breezy zephyrs, which were rising, whispered 
Mary’s name, and in every flower he discerned her happy coun- 
tenance, and he recognized her voice in every thrilling sound. 
His heart contained the same bright weather as the world it- 
self, and because he had Mary’s love, he was beginning to 
live. She was the loved lover, who gave lovely love in re- 
turn for his loving love. And when lovers are happy, every 
wood and grove and forest is a Louvre of pleasure, every hill 
and mountain a Louxembourg of delight, and every painted 
field a Vatican of interest. 

In this flood of ecstasy, Morris arrived home. His father 
glanced sternly upon him, but remained silent — a glance joined 
to a silence that penetrated deeper than the fierce darts of ar- 
rowed words. 


2 


33 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE OGDEN HOUSEHOLD. 

Morris, parting from her, Mary pursued the remainder of 
her way happy, her face filled with smiles, her eyes with light, 
her mind with pleasure, her cheeks with blushes. She was 
cheered with the canticle of rapture. The vanity top of heaven 
was outstretched above her in grandeur, but her eyes ascended 
not; the roomy floor of earth extended around her in luxury, 
and her eyes did there descend. But she saw naught, for with 
eye and mind, she was glancing toward Morris’s bosom. Her 
step was light, and unsteady was her foot ; in fact, the impres- 
sion haunted her that she was perambulating in the air. 

After reaching the gate at her home, and entering, she per- 
mitted her eyes to follow the direction taken by her lover. 
But five minutes previously, they were together; he was the 
morning star of brilliance, she the evening star of radiance ; 
it was the mingling of two luminaries. 

Mary and Morris were now submerged in love effectually. 
They had, for two months past, been ascending the happy 
slope of love, but in this interview they had scaled toward the 
acme of their hopes. She gave him a kind Roland for a kind 
Oliver. As he was handsome, she loved him ; as he was in- 
dustrious, she respected him ; as he was benevolent, she adored 
him; as he was moral, she idolized him. She had smiles for 
his gracefulness, peace for his industry, joy for his kindness, 
and security for his morality. From the moment of their ac- 
quaintance — an acquaintance presaging, perhaps, a happy life 
— they continued to walk the path of love, which was widening 
as gradually as narrows sweet religion’s path to heaven. Yet 


34 


in this their pathway, stood an obstacle, which was not two 
lions in the way, but simply a Titanic hindrance dwarfed — a 
father’s opposition. 

When Mary entered the house she found her mother and her 
supper awaiting her return. 

“The hour is tending toward the end of the day,” com- 
menced her mother, as Mary appeared, “but I suppose you 
were dowered with extra wages of enjoyment, as I noticed 
Morris did employ a portion of your time !” 

“Evening, mother, crept upon us unawares, as we were lost 
each in the other’s company. I was strolling leisurely be- 
neath the shady bowers of Felton’s woods, where I fell in with 
Morris, and the time went by unnoticed.” 

“By the pleased expression your countenance reveals, I am 
led to imagine he gave you a like return for your attachment.” 

“Sometimes I feared that his affection was simply feigned,” 
uttered the radiant girl, as a taint of merry humor traversed 
her countenance. “But Morris is a gallant man, a mould of 
honor, a Paradise of truth, and I am satisfied the horizon of 
his love encircles wide.” 

Mrs. Ogden was absorbed through the frankness displayed 
by her daughter’s countenance and language, yet she was well 
aware that an estrangement existed between themselves and 
Cyrus Felton. 

“What tidings have you concerning Mr. Felton ?” she asked. 
“How does your kind cause, by this time, affect him ?” 

“He still continues firm in his commands, but Morris will 
treat with such conditions that he cannot hesitate but confer 
upon him an ample grant of favor. Morris says his love has 
advanced to such a clime where an opposition would be harm- 
ful.” 

“Have I not once informed you, Mary, that love leaps not at 
a single bound into the hollow of the heart, but must attain its 
hold with time? His love won by you, and yours by him, has 


35 


bridged the current of your lives. But a toll-keeper here 
seems to have control.” 

Mary smiled, thinking secretly it now had reached this 
point. Yet love must often suffer and withstand and out- 
strategy the envies of competitors and sustain the chafing of 
sorrows, griefs and troubles, before a dual allegiance is ac- 
quired. 

After a brief hesitation, Mary ventured : 

“I propose to partake of the wine of courage, proceed to 
Morris’s home, and there unravel the skein of speech tenderly 
to his father. Perhaps I can his harsh and bitter treatment 
turn? He might anger at my plea! But I am a young girl 
and a weak ; yet still I may hold him within the curve of ease. 
Oh, if Mr. Felton raise his choler I will, with briny tears, en- 
treat him until it reach his sense of solace !” 

“Be not alarmed, my daughter,” returned the mother. “The 
flood of indignation is slow to rise in Mr. Felton. All know 
him to be a kind and peaceful man, one who endeavors to keep 
his temper clear of wrath.” 

Mary seemed delighted with this affirmation of her mother’s, 
yet she was not wholly satisfied. 

“Morris says sometimes his father crawls into vexation when 
he learns that we have been associating,” she observed pleas- 
antly. “Yes, mother,” she followed laughing, “and he had 
the unwelcome pleasure of seeing us together in the woods 
this afternoon. Morris was so alarmed ; I have such pity for 
him.” 

“Only be patient, Mary! Mr. Felton is slow to anger, but 
did he rise into fury, I fear your eyes with all their tears, 
your mouth with all its words, your heart with all its love, 
your face with all its pity, and your soul with all its passions, 
could not subdue the tempest of his ire.” 

“Well, I don’t care!” exclaimed Mary passionately. 
“Morris has mantled me completely over with his love, which 
is as true as day.” 


36 


“Still there is an animal, they say, can change its color ; and 
love is but that animal in mimicry, for it can quickly alter if 
so determined. But I hope not so with Morris, as he is the 
most reliable as well as handsomest and noblest young man, 
both far and near, in my judgment. So he has told you the 
full value of his love, as you say?’' 

“Certainly, mother, and his speech did not at all magnify 
his love.” 

While the foregoing conversation was ensuing, Mary and 
her mother were seated at the table, but Mary was abstemious, 
banqueting on joy, rather, than on their frugal meal. She had 
been in company with Morris, where her sweet soul had found 
sweet peace, her true heart had gained true love, and her 
smooth lips had smoothed smooth lips. 

Mrs. Ogden, Mary’s mother, was a tall, brown-haired, 
brown-eyed, brown-featured woman, about forty-eight years 
of age, corpulent, brawny, and not handsome. On first sight, 
one saw her a sort of Amazon. Her virile strength astonished 
the observer, but her kind heart was as patiently lodged with- 
in her bosom as a bud beneath a mail of ice, and her gentle 
soul reposed as calmly as a heart beneath a cuirass of steel, 
which, also, astonished one. She was proprietress of a fertile 
patch of ground, together with a house somewhat dilapidated. 
During the spring and summer and autumn, her daughter, 
Mary, and herself utilized this plot to the best advantage. 
They kept their garden neat and had it skilfully arranged. 
After the radishes they planted peas, after the peas they grew 
celery, and they made late cabbage follow the early potatoes, 
late corn the early corn. By this artifice they were able to 
supply themselves liberally. 

On the whole, they were poor, their straitened circumstances 
often compelling Mrs. Ogden to accept courses of labor from 
her neighbors. Her daughter, Mary, would often find em- 
ployment in different households, one, two, or three weeks 
successively, as the opportunity afforded. 


37 


Mrs. Ogden, like Mrs. Felton, was well versed in the lan- 
guage of Scripture — deep in the world’s supremest book. 
Though her education was limited, she was wedded to the 
fond art of reading ; her Bible was her pleasure and her hap- 
piness, her comfort and her medicine. She was a widow. 
Mary was ten years old at the demise of her father, and re- 
membered little of her parent. 

Julius Ogden, while courting life, was a man, although he 
resembled much a stripling; in fact, a youthful or a boyish 
man. His complexion was fair, his eyes blue as the sky, his 
face as smooth as marble, and his voice as a woman’s. He 
was handsome, or, as we might say, a feminine man, just as 
his wife was^a masculine woman. He was a connoisseur of 
style and grace and beauty in the petticoats, likewise an adroit 
and skilful farmhand. As one considerably in the tropic heat 
of the sun and frigid cold of the north, his clear skin was 
never tanned in summer nor bronzed in winter; his Adonic 
countenance was not dismantled of its fairness. By the day 
he usually performed his labor, one day working here, the next 
there, another otherwhere, and sometimes several days together 
at one place. He was a peon of some note. Julius was eight 
and thirty when overtaken in the race of life. When married, 
his wife over-reached his age two years. 

The only daughter of this couple was given the rural name, 
the common, simple, though noble and holy name of Mary. 
She possessed not the characteristics of her mother, nor those 
of her father, but embodied the amalgamation of both her 
parents. She was sweet, loving, amiable, always thought of 
kindness, and practiced as she thought. She was tall for one of 
her sex, as plump as a partridge, as healthy as the morn, as 
modest as a dove, as fresh as the dew of June, as blushy as an 
apple ; and she was a vase of beauty and a perfect dream — a 
dream of young love. She was a souvenir of radiance, her 
breath as balmy as the month of ^lay. The flood of heavy 
hair — like a sea of waves — that enveloped her head was, in 


38 


shade, a darkish blonde. The blue eyes of a Saxon, and the 
rosy cheeks of a Norman, were her dower ; sunset was on her 
cheeks, heaven in her eye. Her smiles were as inspiring as 
music, and every word shaped by her mouth, as genial as a 
song. A soft and gentle eye is the heart of beauty, a kind and 
tender voice the soul. Her eyes spoke intelligence, and, though 
blue, the emblem of a coquette, she was not given to coquetry. 
She was, as we have said, beautiful ; she was not only beautiful, 
she was elegant; she was not only elegant, she was celestial; 
and to be beautiful is something, to be elegant anything, to be 
celestial everything. In short, she was a pretty whiting-mop 
painted with the flush of nature, and was as poetic a figure as 
nature herself. Many imagined her the living picture of a 
Hebe, wearing the long hair of a Bacchante, the robust neck 
of a Niobe, the broad brow of a Venus, the intelligent eye of 
a Minerva, the chaste mouth of a Diana, the delicate eyelid of 
a Juno, the sweet breath of a Cytherea, the elegant nose of 
a Parisienne, and the pearly teeth of an Ethiop. Mary had 
eighteen winters smooth her snowy brow, and she now was in 
the April of her life ; her matutinal life was happy, peaceful, 
wholesome. When she would adorn her face with smiles, her 
eyes were like the midnight sky — eyes containing the rhetoric 
of chastity, a mouth possessing the eloquence of purity. She 
labored quite a little, therefore, her hands did not resemble 
angel’s hands. She owned an exquisite garden, in which 
prospered odorous and lovely flowers, which she loved and 
admired. She was a florist, and knew that flowers are the 
fragrant words upon the pages of the book of nature, in which 
book a little she could read. That flowers are also an inspira- 
tion to religion she further knew. She had a rich voice, and a 
quick ear for vocal music ; but her home was not provided with 
an organ or piano, as they were not during those days in 
vogue. She was familiar with the uses of the thread and 
needle, and their uses often set in motion. She was also ever 
ready and willing to befriend her companions in excellent 


39 


pastimes. Her beaux yeaux were eflfascinating to' itching 
hearts, but she was subtle and reserved toward them, until, 
finally, she met her true chieftain in the battalion of gallants, 
and became thus alligated to his love. In her beauship’s 
opinion, she was an angel, and where she was, was Paradise. 
Nor was she a stranger to the Bible; her mother had early 
introduced her to this heavenly jewel— God’s worded gift. 
She perused the Proverbs of Solomon, and was inspired by the 
words of the Psalmist; she read the life of the Saviour, the 
acts of the apostles, and delighted in the parables and miracles 
of the New Testament. Having acquired the reading habit, 
she sought means of obtaining various delightful volumes. 

As Mary Ogden used life well, life used her well, and 
further on we shall see if her happy life continued in content- 
ment. 


40 


CHAPTER V. 


A HEAVY SUMMONS GREETS MORRIS. 

Following Morris’s joyful rendezvous with Mary, Tuesday 
evening came. The cerulean top of the universe was gilded 
with the lamps of night, and the room in the Felton mansion 
was ablaze with a brace of candles. Morris was seated at the 
table, the seeming image of content, absorbed in the topics of 
the “Weekly Newspaper,” which brought him in connection 
with the news and happenings of the world. 

Close by his side his mother was sitting in her rocking chair, 
and would occasionally glance toward her son in whom she was 
interested. The servantess was not present, and Amos was 
absent, dilly-dallying in the neighborhood, or perhaps was 
gorging himself with joy in the village. In his old arm chair 
the father, husband, master, was seated, and his attitude was 
such as predicted a slender ray of hope shining dimly through 
his solemn thoughts. 

This particular trio,, in this particular room, on this par- 
ticular evening, husband, wife, son, seemed content with be- 
ing pursuant to their employments, the wife not molesting the 
husband, who was extremely contemplative, and the father not 
thwarting the son who was diligent in his perusal. 

Several times, however, the aged man elevated his head, 
straightened himself in his chair, and glanced uneasily at 
Morris, as if inclined to open the door of his mind and give 
freedom to his thoughts ; but as many several times he sur- 
rendered his designs, and subsided into his former meditations. 
Had one observed him thus, he would have seen that he was 
worried, and anxiously desired to propound that that was 
within his mind. 


41 


Morris continued reading, until finally, having completed the 
news, he cast aside his paper. Meantime the father had mus- 
tered promptness, and decided to question Morris. 

“Morris !” he commanded, hesitating. 

Morris’s suspicion was alive, he knew his father’s object, 
and was only surprised that he had not opened the subject 
sooner on what he apprehended now to follow. 

“If my memory serves me truly,” he continued, “and my 
eye correctly, I perceived you in the bush last Sabbath after- 
noon. You still continue to hold conference with this girl 
under my protest. In the two I mention I am surely not mis- 
taken.” 

This remark was stated plainly, Morris heard it distinctly, 
and being prepared for the outburst, returned the answer 
firmly. 

“Yes, father, it was none else you saw but me,” he said. 
“I met Mary Odgen, though not by appointment, and for a 
while last Sunday we were joyful companions.” 

“You were slightly misguided, then,” returned his father. 

Morris ascertained that his father was stern and was aided 
by his eye in speech. 

“As just remarked, it was our happy fortunes to trespass on 
each other’s dear acquaintance without any previous under- 
standing,” replied Morris calmly. “But, falling in with her, it 
would have been impolite not to engage her ear to hear from 
me one generous word.” 

“It is amazing how this lass has grown to be such a miracle 
that our son can wander forth so Quixotic-like in quest of 
her,” exhaled the winter-haired man, as he gazed intently at 
his spouse while he dictated. 

“What Morris has already related is true,” replied she. 
“Mary has become Mary by Nature’s hands, and I love my- 
self to satisfy my eyes upon her velvet face and charming eyes. 
Besides, she is virtuous and as modestly bashful in proportion 
as her mother is agreeable ; and how hope you to check our 


4 ^ 


son’s affection for her, when her love’s the motive and her 
grace the magnet of his actions?” 

Her husband was slightly aggravated at these words. The 
dictation of his wife explained her present view, although he 
was familiar with her standing toward her son. 

“We will admit that she is beautiful, a lily, a poem, an 
angel,” he supplied laconically. ‘‘But beauty is not all.” 

“If beauty be a fault, Mary Ogden is the one to use that 
fault safely, as a beautiful face and a beautiful heart can 
coalesce in woman,” Morris interrupted. 

“Moreover,” resumed the father, “a woman’s mind and 
beauty is identical with wind and weather for a change.” 

“Husband, you haughtily misjudge the women,” interfered 
the wife. “A woman’s mind is a magnet, firmer than the arm 
of man, as true as the aim of eye, as effectual as the mark of 
bullet. If man is the sturdy oak, woman is the clinging vine, 
and seldom wavers if the pillar falls. It is the men whose trail 
is often clouded by dark infamy.” 

The old man grew grave, and propelled his chair to a posi- 
tion more approximate to the besiegers in the battle where 
their weapons were their tongues. However, in a relaxed 
tone, he remarked: 

“My son, be circumspect, and let the metal of your heart so 
steel your will that you can your bosoms cut asunder of so un- 
even a comparison. Can you not forsake your interests in this 
girl?” 

“Father, no ! She heaps me full the golden measure of her 
love, and I, with Scriptural assurance, must convey to her an 
uniformity. I carry , a vivid passion for her love, as she is the 
very heart of kindness.” 

The truth that there is none so strong of purpose, heart or 
will but beauty is their master, had found its way to Morris. 
But Mary Ogden was not only fair of face, she possessed 
beauty of voice, beauty of heart, beauty of soul. Morris was 
the Romulus of her love, she the Cleopatra who superin- 


43 


tended the obelisk of his affections, and when one has launched 
the ship of love one begins to sail through life. 

Cyrus Felton knew of the growing attachment between his 
son and the charming Mary, yet knew not that his love for her 
could not be overturned, nor that her countenance was as 
fruitful of her love as the garden of Hesperides. 

“Why does this girl attempt to pluck our son from us?” 
he feelingly wondered of his wife. Turning to his son: ‘T 
would have you banish her from the home of your thoughts 
forever. Her joining with us. would work us harm.” 

“Impossible!” exclaimed Morris tormented. “Besides, her 
union to our home would aid rather than detract from it one 
jot or tittle.” 

The father sat sternly erect and full of dignity. His whole 
demeanor grew specific. 

“Morris, son of mine,” he began, “do you perceive this valu- 
able estate, all these acres of productive soil, the sumptuous 
wealth of our annual crops, the thriving stock of the fields, 
those score acres of timber, and the new and exquisite buildings 
that adorn and beautify these premises? Besides, the bank 
contains a lazy pile of wealth, and a neat sum is also invested 
in promising stocks. Now what I have to relate is this : If you 
continue to lavish and waste your time upon and excite this 
weak girl to whom you know I so object, it will prophesy for 
you a fatal failure. I will disinherit you of every cent precise. 
I wish you no ill will, for the world is gloomy and opaque 
enough. It is a father’s hallowed duty to prick the under- 
standing of his son, and remove as much as possible all bar- 
riers from his hedgy pathway. Mary Ogden is not the source 
and true fault of my stand in this which seems to you offense : 
but of this you are the judge.” 

It was evident the torch of discord had begun to blaze, and 
Mrs. Felton was abashed at the flood of sentences which over- 
flowed from her husband’s aqueduct of language. Seldom did 
he speak with such commanding force. Also to Morris this 


44 


gfave a wound deep and annoying; yet he was a mimicker of 
the sublime law of nature — silence. The pleasant chants of his 
mind, the- delightful hymns of his heart, and the soothing 
vespers of his soul, which had been only tossing, had now sud- 
denly been submerged like a foundered ship, and all that re- 
mained was a riotous inner ocean of despair. The mother 
observing her son’s discomfort, after a few moments, chimed 
in suavely : 

“The tide of your emotion and the storm of your voice have 
completely wrecked the features of your son. Do stop the 
mouth of this offending.” 

“You wound me much to-night,” he followed, lowering his 
voice. “I have spoken the truth. Morris, you must either 
uncouple yourself from your inheritance or her.” 

“Father,” echoed Morris seriously, a slight tremor intercept- 
ing his voice. Then continuing: “Mary Odgen’s parent has 
passed away eight winters since, and from thence-forward she 
has received replete attention from a Christian mother, till to- 
day at the ruddy age of eighteen, she is the rightful possessor 
of a faithful and truthful heart, and a true heart resembles the 
sun — that fiery heart of all the universe — which shines bright, 
never changes, and continues his course unfailingly. J will 
not allow my strong mind to be surpassed by a young girl’s 
weak mind, but will continue to love and adore Mary Odgen, 
and remain as true to her as the sun to his heaven, or the dipper 
to the north.” 

The father concluded his son had^ somewhat of the Spartan 
in his being, and both thought the other obstinate. 

“You will bend yourself to my command,” said the July- 
featured, January-headed patriarch. 

“Impossible,” persisted Morris, “I love her most devotedly, 
and more than all, we cannot sever more ; our loves have gone 
too far.” 

“All your speech is worthless,” ejaculated the decisive 
parent. “You know your duty. Obey!” 


45 


“Appease your anger, husband,” interrupted his wife, deep 
with emotion. “What means this unnecessary strife between 
father and son, members of one family? You will finally push 
this discord into peril.” 

“Peace ! peace !” murmured the husband, seasoning his words 
with a suitable gesture. “Hold your peace !” 

This stroke subdued his ire and paralyzed his force of 
speech. It was like pouring water on fire or oil on troubled 
waters. But Morris was deeply harassed at his father’s com- 
ment, yet his lukewarm heart and cautious mind were well 
diluted with his cool and easy actions and the manner of the 
presentation of his speech. His father comprehended him to 
be sustained by a patience synonymous to that of Pericles, or 
even Job, and he seemed also to control himself as notably as 
the One whose life extended from the Manger to the Cross. 
But the mother, more vigilant, discerned a lividness upon his 
features, a lividness in which a future could be read. 

“Morris,” she tendered in sympathy, “do not tolerate that 
expression of dismay on your countenance. One would 
imagine you were sick, not knowing your agitation.” 

“Yes, mother, sick I am, but that sickness is such that I re- 
quire no medicine to bring me to my former self. No son of 
^Esculapius can relieve me of this distemper, which has at- 
tached itself to my heart with gripe severe.” 

Meanwhile his father surveyed him closely. 

“It is needless for you to lose so much complexion,” he re- 
marked in a more remollient tone. “This girl simply by some 
love trick has caged your idle passions. You surely cannot 
hope to unite her to your life to waste away your promises.” 

“What good of hope have I if you give me no hope of good ?” 
inquired Morris, pathetically. “You do not condescend to 
grant me privilege to love her even, or to speak to her or see 
her. Mother, such hardness should not seek its lodging in 
such as father’s heart.” 

Cyrus Felton was seriously pondering; his eyes were cast 


46 


upon the floor. After several minutes he relaxed his pose, and 
raised his face toward Morris ; it was again relumined. 

‘‘My son,” he disputed, “you informed me once that Julius 
Caesar was as constant as the northern star. Why, then, 
should I change ? Several different times have I endeavored to 
break up your purposes toward this Mary, whom you had 
ensnared with such astuteness in the leafy wood the Sabbath 
past, but your will, above all wills, will prevail. You must 
seek to retain in the pockets of your heart your wealth of love 
until another more suitable appears upon the scene.” 

“You are both men, men like men of Scripture ; then cease 
to strike these chords that endanger your joy and peace,” the 
unsatisfied wife and mother entreated. “It is too sad to think 
that this gentle maiden must be the bone of this contention 
upon which you rattle with your rigid, rugged, scolding dia- 
logue.” 

The sarcastic statement of the father and the pitiful plea of 
the mother increased Morris’s humiliation. He followed: 

“Her ship of love and joy, laden with all her treasure, is 
anchored in the harbor of my heart ; and now you, a most de- 
sirable father, press me to shape myself into a storm, and cast 
her forth to sea, to be wrecked by the yesty waves of sorrow 
and despair.” 

The father’s countenance again became firm, then rigid, 
then dark, then moody, dwindling into a sombre mask, the fire 
of his heart lighting up his eyes. As smoke that saunters in 
the air, clouds that glide across the heavens, foam that rides 
upon the waves, or flames that from the furnace leap, so his 
goaded brain was swimming, pitching and whirling in his 
senile head. He hurled a look upon Morris, and cautioned : 

“Your menace to my precepts is like a drug, a bitter, deadly 
drug, a blade, sharp, keen and hurtful, an irate knell that 
warns my years and age to sorrow and the sepulchre. Your 
heart is wrongly stained with this enchantress’ love, and one 
only wonders it does not transmute your blood and build a 
stony entrance to your heart.” 


47 


This flash, as if having leaped from a cloud, dazed Morris, 
as he was completely stunned beneath its warlike stroke. 

“You are growing too severe, as dark as night,” interfered 
his wife again. 

“As I perceive myself, I am not at fault,” muttered the son. 
“And as I have no mirror for my heart, I cannot ascertain that 
it be wrongly stained with Mary’s love ; yet my conscience is a 
glass suflicient to determine I am in the right.” 

His mother had turned to desponding silence. 

“You must remember, yes all of us must remember, the 
mistake committed by her thoughtless parent,” said the father 
rising from his chair. “You are too courageous of heart, too 
noble of purpose, too chivalrous of mind, and too glorious of 
nature to allow the simple wiles of an artful she to take 
prisoner your passions. Upon what hour does the clock 
stand ?” 

“Almost upon ten,” the matron, retiring, responded. 

The parents were preparing to retire. The mother had 
passed into a room adjoining the kitchen, the father lingering 
behind. He glanced toward Morris, and, as a departing sen- 
tence, said: 

“I hope my words, like seeds of corn, will produce a revolu- 
tion in the soil of your reflection.” 

With this his exeunt from the room was affected, and the 
door was closed, separating Morris from his parent; never- 
theless, the son, pursuing, said : 

“My breast is sorely damaged, and this interchange of 
speech is sufficient to cake the substance of my veins and 
shrink my heart.” 

And Morris was left alone — no, not alone, as silence was 
his kind associate, as were also those of sterner pungency, 
thought, trouble, grief, love. He was alone, yet these com- 
panions gave him their society. He was not living in obedi- 
ence to them, so much as they in grossest malice were belliger- 
ent to him. His father’s retirement seemed to lift the flood- 


48 


gates of his misery, for like a dammed-up swollen flood, his 
tidal torments broke, and streamed hotly surging through 
every artery of his being, eroding and wearing away every 
mark and print of peace. He was unhappied. To vehement 
sorrow tender hope was now exchanged. His father was as 
staunch as rock, as impervious to words as veinless rock to 
water running; his door of mercy would not open, his locked 
heart not unclasp ; his breast was sealed against his son’s most 
ardent wish. The sickle of grief cut keen^ the grain of future 
promise falling. Clouds of. thought traversed his mind, a 
cavalry of torture galloped through his heart, and his soul 
was a prairie stampeded by a herd of grizzly, bison-humped 
woes. 

Two evenings before he walked in ecstacy, where now 
affliction paced him over. His impassioned endearment for 
Mary was the agency of his unhappiness, as he experienced 
that the element of love can roughly ruffle the placid sea of 
life. With forcible command, his father had explained to him 
what he would have him do, but Morris had that within which 
also was directing him — a prompting heart. Could his love 
for her become endable? Would Mary permit herself to be 
thus disappointed? Could she endure such a shock? Could 
he? Such thoughts racked and sacked the stifling closets of 
his brain. His fiercest adhominem had originated. In future 
he might have Mary or he might have wealth, but mammon 
and his love he cannot both possess. He must divorce him- 
self from one ; a choice of two difficulties, a difflcult choice. 

Full half an hour had disappeared, and Morris was yet 
wrapped in solemn revery. He sit there as one frozen, as one 
lifeless, as one petrified, as an ossification, his elbows on the 
table, and propped in his hands his chin. He was nervous 
and spiritless, his gazing eyes fixed. Two radiant diamonds 
rolled from his eyes, hung between his fringed lids, quivering 
and glistening before the light, and slid coldly down his chilly 
cheeks, which seemed to awaken him. With his hand he 


49 


effaced those flowing gems; they were two tears, each filled 
with a world of sorrow. Gloomy imaginations would arise, 
cloud-like in his mind, and insensate surges of anguish swept 
across his tide-like chest as if to swamp the vessel of affection. 

“The golden image of • my May-bright love, father 
would have me barter against my will, for the copper sem- 
blance of December coldness,” in silence he muttered to him- 
self. “Yet father is obliging and always was humane. I have 
ever harkened to his propositions, but can I now? And to 
this? No! Why? Because the gentle sunshine of my Mary’s 
smiles have ripened my love, and, being ripe, it shall not be 
my duty to suffer its dislodgement from the tree of life to 
perish.” 

He saw he could not live and enjoy life with muffled love, 
as the thralldom of his love would be unbearable. His judg- 
ment also revealed to him that one, with a smothered passion 
gnawing at his heart, would reflect the deportment that the 
melancholy Hamlet wore. 

In his meditative flight, he rose, strided across the room, 
and began to ascend the stairs as he had the steps of love ; he 
tread heavily, carrying a load of tribulation. He sought his 
couch of rest. He lay abed awhile awake, a dizzy, gloomy 
while that seemed to him a day. The servant sleep refused to 
prop his eye gates shut ; he himself was unable to close those 
doors of slumber ; the flood of wakefulness prevented it. 
Worry is not a good somnific. 

The clock in the room below struck eleven, then twelve, 
and soon after his brother appeared and retired. One, two, 
three had unwound from the coil of the clock, and Morris 
was still turning and twisting and tumbling and tossing on his 
bed. Hard-hearted trouble, however, finally gave way before 
his better nature, and Morris rolled wearily into the embrace 
of slumber. 


50 


CHAPTER VI. 


A BROKEN VOW. 

Faulty deeds done in the body by a parent, usually, as seen 
by numerous eyes, lessen the reputation of their children, as 
though by inheritance, they are admitted to the wrong as sub- 
stitutes. This is the principal reason why Cyrus Felton could 
not reconcile himself to Morris and Mary’s love. Therefore, 
we will take a journey with us back to a place eight years 
previous to the time this story opens, or the winter that Julius 
Ogden had taken his departure from this world. Julius Ogden, 
when living, resided north of the Felton place, about one mile, 
and the village was east of the Felton place, about one mile; 
inasmuch as Julius had the excursion of almost one and a-half 
miles to the village. 

He had the practice of visiting this hamlet weekly, especially 
on Saturday evenings, and occasionally several times during 
one week. 

In a locality which is equally distant from the village and 
from Ogden’s home, was situated a valuable estate — the 
equator to these two poles, as Ogden fancied. This estate 
comprised the opulence of a man named Horatio Magner, and 
here Julius found his laborious harvest; it was his mine of 
labor, his mint of pay. Here he mostly received his stipend. 
Julius was a deft laborer, diligent in his quotidian tasks, and, 
consequently, Horatio Magner and Julius Ogden became 
unique and constant friends. Generally, when the blushing 
morning sun came peering over the eastern hills, Julius could 
often be observed briskly hastening toward the Magner farm ; 
and, as the purple evening sun had expended his day’s labor. 


51 


Julius Ogden had also performed his; so, after the yellow 
globe had sunk to rest beneath the western woodland hills and 
the blue canopy of the horizon— jeweled counterpane of Na- 
ture’s bed,— he could again be seen slowly strolling tired home. 

Just outlying the suburbs of the Magner farm, was a small, 
tidy mansion, or manor house, belonging to Horatio Magner. 
In this house resided a drover and his wife, who constituted 
the duarchy of this home. This drover, whose name was 
Marcus Amblewore, was thirty-five years of age, short, stout, 
and sturdy, and whose pleasantness and flippantness of tongue 
won for him a wide acquaintance. He was as canny as a 
Scotchman, shrewd, cautious, and thrifty. In spite of the coy- 
ness of his wife, his credit did expand. He was of a dark 
complexion, his eyes gray, his head adorned with a harvest of 
dark brown hair, his mouth screened with a mammoth mus- 
tasche, and a large simous nose stuck conspicuously on his 
countenance. His physiognomy and -physique were the ex- 
emplar of that of a frontier settler. He was not a woman’s 
ideal of a man, although his meek manner and voice had 
their own peculiar charm. 

His wife was ’one of those women, who couple to a partner 
in the march of life at the first opportunity, for fear of losing 
the bridal crown, and at the age of eighteen was married. 

Marcus Amblewore’s enterprise was such as compelled him 
to be from home considerable of his time, and sometimes, on 
a lengthened journey, he was absent from his home several 
days together. 

The drover’s wife was only four and twenty — each year a 
blackbird baked in her pie of life — neither tall nor short, and 
not corpulent. Compared to a ronyon, she was as the hum- 
ming-bird to the eagle. She was a fancy woman, a perk lady, 
a solute wife. She was fond of fallals and baubles, enjoyed 
fingle-f angles, adorned herself with showy guipure, and 
decorated herself as a horticulturist does his garden. In the 
beaumonde she was a countess, and in the boudoir a queen. 


52 


She was a landscape of beauty, aided by art, as fresh as a 
daisy, assisted by rouge. She was a fair-faced one, her head 
canopied with hair like golden floss — hair which resembled 
auriferous streams bursting from a colored fountain. Her 
eye imitated the eye of an actress, her neck the neck of a 
swan, her hands the hands of an angel, her feet the feet of a 
fairy. Like a dryad she presided over the forest of fashion; 
her home was the Paris of the community, and she its em- 
press. This feminine butterfly was a sort of snare, her beauty 
the bait ; this wasp-waisted, handsome-haired, easy-eyed, 
haughty-hearted, gaudy-garbed Amelia was a sublime contrast 
to the true, noble, and innocent Desdemona ; this day-star was 
as whimsical as night. She was more of a quietist than a 
hoiden ; she was more of a muse than a gossip. She was rest- 
less and wily, her soft eye more agile than her tongue ; though 
prudish, her eye possessed a dialect. 

The Amblewore family was childless — another propitious 
omen. 

Julius Ogden, on passing the drover’s house, would fre- 
quently stop before the drover’s gate, and hold conversation 
with the drover’s wife. He gradually became more intrepid, 
and she more chivalrous. He was beginning to be the inter- 
fulgent ray of the drover and his wife, and several times 
maintained his position before the gate almost an hour. One 
evening he ventured within the limits of the gate and was 
soon seated with the drover’s wife upon the porch. Without 
being really aware, Julius was piercing the tempting veil of 
her inviting graces, and so we find, that several weeks after- 
ward he entered within the confines of the drover’s house, 
the drover absent. On entering that threshold, he intromitted 
himself upon her husband, the drover’s throne. 

Julius Ogden’s faithful wife was sensible to the fact that 
her husband’s visits to the vilHge were becoming more pro- 
longed than usual. He failed to return home until the mesial 
time of night, and several times he had not arrived till the 


53 


small, late hours of . darkness were almost wasted. Once, be 
it to his delinquency, he had not reappeared to comfort his 
home, until the golden streaks of dawn had tinged the horizon 
in the east. That was a sad night to his wife, a solemn and a 
tearful night. Julius, however, when asked for an account 
of his protracted absence, acquitted himself on the pretense of 
business in the village. 

One morning in the bleak month of December, Marcus, the 
drover, was preparing for a distant route. The journey would 
require the absence of two days. His horse was standing in 
readiness before the house, the animal in somewhat of a re- 
fractory condition, owing to the hyemal weather. 

“Louisa !” called the drover to his wife, “an extended journey 
is mapped out before me, and requires the length of two days. 
I shall not be able to return before to-morrow night.” 

“Not before to-morrow night?” she inquired, as though 
surprised. 

“The suns of two days will have gone ere I can complete 
my tour. My journey stretches far; I will arrive at the Home 
Run to-noon, and my expectations will carry me to Olestown, 
where I propose to harbor for the night.” 

“How far distant is Olestown ?” 

“Eighteen miles to go direct, but I must branch off many 
times at bifid highways and crossroads, and retrace many 
ramifications, to meet the purpose of my trip.” 

“You should return home as darkness falls, for it is so lone- 
some here alone. I like not the solitude of these long nights.” 

“Yes; it is truly unpleasant, but the business of this journey 
will require two full and busy days.” 

“Marcus, my husband, you should so shape your trips to 
be at home of nights !” 

“Well, I must proceed upon my journey!” 

He launched forth upon his tour, and was soon whirled from 
the sight of his wife’s pursuing eyes. By dint of visiting 
numerous farm houses — those hearts of premises, — arid en- 


54 


tering farm-yards — those stomachs of estates, — and following 
briery lanes — those alimentary canals of demesnes, — he did 
not arrive at the Home Run, the public house of the place, till 
one o’clock P. M. He had covered more than half his distance. 
Here he ordered oats for his horse and meat for himself, tar- 
rying until almost three, to permit his steed the recuperation 
of his mettle. 

At the hour of three he was continuing his journey, stop- 
ping occasionally at some fann-house, and had not ac- 
complished his destination when overtaken by night; he had 
yet six miles to Olestown. The moon had just arisen from be- 
hind a clump of spectre trees. By his vigilance, he detected 
a large corona, which surrounded the moon, and was outlined 
on the caliginous sky — a sign of rain or snow. The weather 
had also moderated some. The drover expected this day 
would be succeeded by a distempered one. 

As the clock was drifting toward the point where eight is 
struck, Marcus Amblewore drove up before the wayside inn 
at Olestown, and checked his horse and — “Hello !” roared 
the drover, which resounded through the tavern and echoed 
from the adjacent woods. 

He was presently hailed by the pursy, portly, wheezy land- 
lord, who wallowed from the house, and came waddling duck- 
like across the porch, or rather, with the awkward, shambling, 
shuffling gait of a plantigrade, when struggling on his pos- 
terior Jimbs. The stock-buyer and the rum-seller — usually 
two companionable friends — instantly recognized each other, 
and shook hands with a cordial and hearty grasp. Then the 
proprietor commanded the hostler to dispose of his guest’s 
horse and vehicle. 

They entered the tavern together, and simultaneously as the 
drover entered the door of the inn, the drover’s own house 
was invaded by Julius Ogden, the shrewd and handsome. 
Julius had been to the village during the day, and the drover’s 
artful wife, observing him as he passed, watched for his re- 


55 


turn, when a brief tete-a-tete ensued. Temptation was the 
serpent who extended to this Eve the apple of disloyalty, and 
she excepting, in turn, offered to Julius Ogden the core of 
enticement, which, receiving, stuck in the throat of his reputa- 
tion. 

At his ingress to the hostelry, the tavern-haunters im- 
mediately recognized the drover, he being well acquainted 
with them. 

“How are you, Amblewore?” cried one of the loungers. 

“How do you do?” returned the’ drover. 

“A cold day, Marcus !” remarked another. 

“A frigid zone of coldness !” retorted the drover. 

“Tough for a man who is a drover !” shouted yet another. 

“Tough as Alaska — a Siberia !” followed the drover. 

“Mr. Amblewore, you’re quite a pull from home?” harangued 
the fourth. 

“Decidedly some distance!” responded the drover. 

Marcus Amblewore was thoroughly familiar with Olestown 
and its inhabitants. This village formerly received its name 
from Olestein, the father of the burly landlord, the proprie- 
tor’s name, at the time whereof we write, being Abacus Ole- 
stein. Abacus — Bac for short — was a queer, quaint, loquacious 
and aquatic sort of personage, being almost as exorbitant in 
circumference as in stature. His elephantine head was firmly 
set upon his shoulders, and when wishing to turn, his whelky 
neck, like a cogwheel, rotated the entire world of flesh. He 
was as fond of chatting as he was of eating or drinking, 
though he was sluggish in speech, and drawled out his words. 
On the whole, he was an entertaining piece of humanity, for 
his heart was as warm as his body. 

The evening was helped along in pleasant conversation, 
mingled with stories of war and ghosts and bar-room ^fights, 
which were narrated over the inebriant glass. One of the 
speakers, peradventure, referred to an episode which caused 
a dart of recollection to pierce the memory of the drover, when 


56 


he suddenly started. Withdrawing his diary from his pocket, 
he extracted an envelope and perused in silence a note therein 
which he had overlooked. This perusal jogged the drover’s 
mind, and he looked up with a baffled countenance. 

“Upon what date does the calendar show his mark?” he 
inquired of the landlord. 

“December has now wasted thirteen days,” he replied. “This 
is the ides of December.” 

“I have an appointment to-morrow at nine A. M., which 
almost escaped my memory; I must immediately proceed to 
journey home,” the drover remarked. 

“Julius Caesar met his ides of March,” interposed one of the 
loungers ; “you do not propose to meet your ides of December ?” 

“Business with me is business ! Hostler, my horse imme- 
diately. I have eighteen miles home, and from home nine 

miles to . It is impossible to cover that distance in the 

morning. Til forth upon my journey now. My horse has 
had sufficient rest; besides, he is of extra blood.” 

He noticed that the clock marked half-past eleven. He 
was making ready to depart, when the hostler returned. 

“Three inches of snow and the heavens yet busily laboring !” 
he roared. 

A rush was propagated to the door; the excited conclave 
of narrators poured from the tavern ; the truth was told, as 
there lay the feathery sheet which was being incessantly re- 
plenished. But the drover urged his horse in haste, and after 
nestling himself in his vehicle beneath cosy robes, he remarked : 

“Business is a necessity, and I must prepare myself to wel- 
come that necessary business.” 

“He has an urgent and unwelcome drive,” said the landlord 
to the bystanders. 

Thus the drover launched himself upon the ocean of night. 
The serene air was filled with the invisible precipitation. Not 
a breath of noise disturbed the vast solitude of the night ; not 
a sound from a single sleepy cur aroused the drover from his 


57 


meditation; it was nothing but the silent, silent fall of the 
snow. 

He supposed he had been on the road about three hours. 
It had ceased to snow, and the dank and dreary darkness was 
becoming adulterated with a paly light. He looked from his 
vehicle toward the northwest and perceived stars. He began 
to catch glimpses of the moon through the dispersing clouds. 
Taking advantage of this illumination, he examined his watch, 
and found it after three ; he had been driving more than three 
hours, and was one mile from his home. 

The lissome tread of his horse had grown cumbrous — the 
journey almost doubled — and sank noiselessly into the mildew- 
ed scarf of earth, while the wheels of the vehicle progressed 
with an inaudible sound. 

He had reached his home, and the fatigued steed was dully 
champing his bit as he foresaw the luxury of his stall. Amble- 
wore stepped into the new snow as softly and coldly as the 
frigid substance itself, and proceeded to separate the animal 
from his burden. He stabled his horse and housed his vehicle — 
his servant and his slave, his two friends in need — and ad- 
vanced toward the house. 

He approached the door silently, the elastic carpet deaden- 
ing his footsteps, and rapped upon the panel. After some 
length of time, with continued rapping, his wife’s footsteps 
approached ; an inquiry and a response followed ; the door was 
unbarred, and the husband entered. A small conversation en- 
sued. As he was exhausted, he retired for the few remaining 
hours, and the elapse of several minutes — his ennui ponderous 
— found him wrapped in a profound slumber, while sleep 
called not upon his wife’s disturbed mind that night no more. 
The husband dwindled under the soothing hand of Morpheus 
that night, ignorant of his wife’s amorous intrigue and cham- 
bered behavior, not knowing she had bestowed his own proper 
cestus upon a proxy. His sleep was deep and undisturbed. 

It was after six when he awoke. He arose, dressed, and the 


58 


handkerchief that lay upon the floor did not escape his notice. 
It was not the kerchief of Othello. He looked, and found it 
not his own ; it was his wife’s. No, it was not hers ! a printed 
name was thereon. He read : “J- Ogden.” 

“Julius Ogden!” he muttered in a throaty voice, although 
forcible enough to be distinguished by his wife. Her features 
were very livid. The face of this xanthous-haired adulteress 
— this pattern of jMary Magdalene — that had suddenly turned 
10 like a primrose — pale as milk — now solved itself. The 
drover rushed to the window, opened it vigorously, thrust his 
head into the breezy morn, and discerned foot-steps fresh in 
the snow. 


59 


CHAPTER VII. 


MORRIS AND AMOS. 

After a repose short and sound, Morris awoke fatigued. 
He arose, dressed, and descended the stairs, shortly followed 
by his brother, Amos. The parents, like all aged persons, had 
risen early. All devoted themselves to their morning tasks. 

A dense fog was overhanging the earth, as if its purpose 
were to smother up the morn. This ocean of fog formed a 
sort of roof, and prevented one from viewing the appearance 
of the morn ; but the rising sun and the morning breeze soon 
began to lift this fog — this Creator’s breath. A faint glim- 
mering of the sun — proud Gaffer Phoebus of heaven — pres- 
ently steered into sight, and the total region of the dozy orient 
was promptly exposed to observation. The blear visage of the 
sun, which resembled a huge carbuncle on the face of the 
firmament, was overshadowed, while the cheeks of the sky 
blushed with the distemperature. The drowsy sky was grow- 
ing more and more rubicund, as if striving to burst into a 
lambent flame. The moaning of the wind — the nervous and 
the quaking air — that was slowly gaining in strength, began 
to play a crooning tune upon the trees, the bushes, the ar- 
cades, the crevices, the angles, the threads. About the hour of 
eight a rainbow was reflected on the welkin in the west — an 
auspicious weather sign. In fact, the western sky did not dis- 
close a good complexion. 

The forenoon was swiftly fleeting, and the brothers, who 
were preparing for a journey to the city in the afternoon, were 
executing odd labors of consequence about the barn. Morris 
had already entered the house ; besides, he seemed extremely 


6o 


sad. Amos also stalked with limping and lilting gait into the 
house. 

“How long, mother, until dinner is provided for us,” won- 
dered Morris. “We should proceed upon our journey early, 
to be able to return with the return of eve.” 

“It will be prepared soon ; ere the dial can show his mark 
altered to the eye,” she answered. 

They were having their mid-day meal earlier than usual, on 
this middle day of the seven, — this keystone of the week — so 
furnishing the boys an early outset for their trip. It is an ex- 
cellent rule in life, as an early start is the key to success ; it 
unlocks the door of a happy life ; it unhoards the riches of 
wisdom; it reveals the wisdom of riches; it is the tortoise in 
the race — the Genesis of real life. 

“Women make the forenoon, the Almighty the afternoon,” 
says the adage. Mrs. Felton had abbreviated the forenoon ; 
but was powerless now to abridge the afternoon ; she was 
unable to telescope the coming night into the day. 

“Perhaps it were better to postpone our going to the city 
until some future day,” said Amos. “The signs of the morn- 
ing are harbingers that foretell a sickness of the air.” 

“I do not suffer my courage to be asphyxiated by the 
thought of possible aerial storms,” Morris interpreted, looking 
at his brother. “There can exist tempests in the human breast 
that beat and blow and surge more than windy atmosphere 
did ever equal.” 

Those words issued from Morris’s mouth, but experience 
uttered them for him, as there was raging within his breast, a 
storm fearful, gloomy, terrible. 

“Morris,” inserted the father, “I also expect a derangement 
of the atmosphere — a Niagara of water, a cyclone of wind.” 

Amos Felton was a prognosticator; he was schooled on all 
the signs of the weather ; he was well versed in the quality of 
the climate. Being, therefore, a weather prophet, he possessed 
the right to prophesy the weather. 


The comestibles being arranged ready on the table, they sat 
down to partake of the frugal, early repast. 

Soon afterwards they proceeded on their journey. It was 
the meridian of day, with the sun in the zenith and the clock 
at twelve. After so bleak, so stifling, and so foul a morning, 
the day was beautiful. Their swift courser scoured the way 
like an automaton, leaving a dusty length of space behind his 
hoofs, his gauzy, rolling mane flapping and floating in the 
genial breeze like flaunting sails, his breast picturesque with a 
flaky foam, still speeding onward like a Pegasus to attain the 
heaven of his goal, while Morris held, with tightened grasp, 
the taut and steady reins. The mettlesome trotter, by his 
keenness, seemed to drain from Morris’s arms, a portion of his 
grief. 

Love first introduced him to the new dawn of ecstasy, — a 
gathering cloud — then presented him to the twilight of an- 
guish. Woman accelerates man’s happiness ; she also retards 
it; she is the current in the human ocean, — a warm Gulf 
stream which mariners in love sometimes encounter. 

The mettle of the horse was lessening, and his gait began 
to grow lax. Neither of the brothers thus far, had given 
their tongues to much conversation. Amos opened the door 
of conversation several times, but Morris was taciturn, his at- 
tention otherwhere. Amos knew with what disaster his 
brother’s hope had met. 

“Why will you not hear me?” Amos finally said. “Your 
manly mind should be able to dissolve that womanly grief as 
water salt, wind fog, smiles anger, the sun lime, or the magi- 
cian his deck of cards or handkerchief.” 

Morris turned his head and his eye fell upon Amos, who 
felt its weight. Amos shrunk and the shrink extended to his 
shanks. 

“You are liable to catch grief some day yourself,” replied 
Morris, shocked at his brother’s badinage. “Grief ill stores 
up such gawky heydey as harps upon your imagination, which. 


62 


once changed, will start the wheels of dolor circling, and 
freeze your fervid burlesque like a smiling peach before the 
polar north/' 

Amos smiled, thinking his brother’s words seeming folly, 
would not permit my happiness to be bombarded, much 
less scaled by the assassin sorrow. They love too much who 
grieve for love, and grieve to hard who die for love.” 

“Thousands for love have died,” Morris returned earnestly. 
“Did not the generals of war and countless patriots quit this 
life for our love and the love of their descendants? Yes! for 
our love and liberty! Did not heroes kiss in death the green 
sod, the sandy waste and the cold snow for that same love.? 
Did not our own grandfather draw his sword, aim his musket, 
face the muzzles of cannon, bare his breast and plunge into 
the teeth of danger for a similar love? Then speak not to me 
of love, for I love a lover’s love.” 

“Yes, you are right, they did !” returned Amos anxiously, 
“but not for that womanly love for womanly woman. You 
might extract sorrow from something, but you cannot extract 
sorrow from nothing. Woman is almost nothing, a slavish 
plaything of the world.” 

He roared aloud with laughter, while Morris was sorely 
grieved ; Morris was hurt. After this they sank into a period 
of silence. 

“There is not a cloud perceptible on the horizon, but a 
hundred signs indicate a storm,” pursued Amos. 

“Signs, like some people, do not always fulfill their prom- 
ises,” echoed Morris. 

As Amos observed, every symptom indicated a storm. The 
telery spider, the spiny grasshopper, thq low-flying swallow, 
the vertebraless serpent, the slow-paced snail, the pesky 
fly, the hump-backed toad, the drooping vegetation, the 
withered leaves, the sultry air; the blatant low of the cattle, 
the plaintive coo of the dove, the guttural croak of the frog, 
the shrill cry of the plover, the sniffling whiffs of the swine, 


63 


the raucous crow of the rooster, the distinct voice of the farm- 
er, the hazy state of the atmosphere, the repeated echo of noise ; 
all signified an approaching change in the atmosphere. 

Besides, Amos was perpetually emicant with joy. He was, 
to say, “a sport” — a wordy sport. It is not always necessary 
to appeach a man of sport. Shakespeare loved sport ; he was 
an intellectual sport; his principal game was chess; words 
were his chess-men, language his chess-board. He played 
this game with alacrity. 

They had already entered the city and soon arrived at the 
hotel, where they entrusted their horse to the care of the 
hostler. Morris proceeded upon his duty, and Amos intended 
to entertain himself in his diversion. He went in pursuit of 
some of his colleagues of Hedonism, at their usual trysting 
places, Amos was usually found where the “crowned goblet 
foams with floods of wine,” and other substances of a stronger 
nature. Meantime, Morris sought a jeweler’s store to pur- 
chase a golden locket. He then wandered through the streets 
at haphazard. Next he ventured into a building, and when 
he emerged again, he held a grip of extra grade. He returned 
to the hotel, and secreted the package in the vehicle. He was, 
indeed, concocting some scheme within his brain. Thoughts, 
like the aphides, were multiplying in his mind ; and designs, 
4ike the termites, were hatching in his conscience. His ex- 
citement increased, his hurt strengthened, his despair re- 
doubled ; his knees trembled, his flesh quivered, his nerves 
were unstrung ; in truth, his whole frame vibrated like a wall 
before an earthquake, a forest under a storm, or an echo in 
sunny Italy. 

The city clock was on the stroke as Morris arrived at the 
hotel to await his brother, who, some fifteen minutes afterward, 
came ambling along with the blossoms of debauch portrayed 
on his features. This wizard of the colored beverage, this 
human demijohn, was filled with the liquid music ; he was 
soaked with the bottled poetry; he was inundated with the 


64 


uncorked painting. Morris was chagrined to discover his 
brother thus. 

Their conveyance ordered, they were soon on their way 
home. Amos was desirous of having speech divide the time, 
haste the drive, and fill the air, while Morris would have been 
content that silence reign supreme. On observing his brother’s 
depression of spirits that hung upon him still, Amos re- 
marked : 

‘T cannot understand why you allow the thought of Mary 
Ogden, a girl like any other, to prey upon your mind? Why 
do you let within the fortress of your mind, you, a soldier, a 
strong, brave giant, rapacious grief to direct the rapine of your 
happiness ?” 

Morris started at this sarcasm, and did not reply, knowing 
verily, that fell sorrow, as his brother mentioned, was con- 
tending with him. 

“And I do not see,” he continued, “why so many people in 
the world give their bosoms’ lords, or cones of muscle, per- 
mission to sentence their bright lives to so much sorrow?” 

“Amos,” he returned, after a moment, sorrowfully, “You 
speak the truth. There is a revolution in my heart, and my 
mind has lost the master of himself.” 

“You should partake of aqua vitce, that elixir of life, to 
drown your trouble,” said Amos satirically. “Follow the 
teachings and gleesome habits of your happy brother !” 

Morris was irritated at this unvarnished thought of his 
brother, as he worshiped at the altar of temperance. 

“The Bible contains the only true elixir,” he retaliated. “If 
one drinks deep of that Pierian spring, he needs no sparkling 
colored drink.” - 

“ ‘The camill first troubleth the water before he drinke,’ ” 
said the jubilant Amos artfully. “Clear water and camel’s 
labyrinth of stomachs disagree, and I am like the monarch 
of the sandy waste. I take my drink disturbed with the juice 
of grain, and if I get it not my back arises. Water belongs 

65 

3 


to the settlement of the croaking populace, — the greenbacks 
of the pond — and you should be their cupbearer. I am in favor 
of leaving to the frogs, that which is the frogs. I am also in 
favor of leaving to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God God’s. 
The Bible is an excellent cloak for melancholy people, but for 
those of vigor and pleasure, it is gladly welcome when dis- 
missed. Our people of fun and frolic had rather study the 
language of the seething cup, in the volume of the saloon, 
than the Books of Moses ; they had rather practice the giddy 
dance, than the Acts of the Apostles.” 

This was a bitter dose for Morris to countenance. He was 
sadly injured by his brother’s stinging remark, as it seemed 
he wished to augment his. troubles. He did not desire to hear 
one, and especially his brother, with speech like a poinard 
thrust, attack so pure a stronghold as he just assailed. 

“Amos, you should, at least, permit one little branch of re- 
ligion to shelter you, and not to tolerate the dismal air of vice 
continually.” 

Morris spoke seriously, as solemnly as one pronouncing the 
benediction of a Sabbath service. Amos glanced restlessly to- 
ward him and burst into a ridiculous laugh, remarking: 

“Religion is as slippery as an eel, and I want none of it.” 

“Oh, that such as you, could feel the weight of the Bible, 
which would assist in bending the knee in righteousness !” 

Amos was stiff-necked, proud-hearted, impetuous, and un- 
willing to be baffled by his brother. 

“Was not the constructor of the ark once intoxicated?” he 
asked, slyly ogling at his brother. “Did not the world’s great- 
est men love the spirits of the grain and juice of grape? 
Shakespeare, and numerous others? Then why rebuke me, 
a simple child of the excitement ? What should I with water ? 
Water is the breast-milk of the clouds, but wine is the soul of 
the vineyard.” 

“Yes,” pursued Morris, “wine is the water of hell, and water 
is the wine of heaven.” 


66 


Amos did not reply, but was fumbling in his pockets as if 
in quest of something. 

“If this Briarian monster, drink, could meet his Hercules, 
his hundred, hindering hands, might not control, henceforward, 
so many murderous mortals,” concluded Morris. 

Having rummaged his pockets, Amos elicited therefrom a 
card, and urged Morris’s attention. On this card was neatly 
printed a sextet of mottoes. 

“Listen !” he commanded, “the Bible speaks these through 
his own mouth.” He read aloud : 

1. Drink thy wine with a merry heart. 

2. And wine that maketh glad the heart of man. 

3. A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry. 

4. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his 
-misery no more. 

5. Drink ho longer water, but use a little wine for thy 
stomach’s sake, and thine often infirmities. 

6. Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and 
wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. 

Morris was silent. He was deeply grieved ; he was tor- 
mented by his brother. Contrastly, Amos was happy. The 
fumy flame was igniting his spicy satire. His rule in life was 
dim vivimoiis vivamous. 

All at once a low, distant, rumbling sound reached their 
ears, when, turning in the direction whence it resounded, they 
beheld ponderous clouds rising in the west. They had already 
covered one-third of their distance home, two sections of the 
trichotomy to journey yet. 


67 


CHAPTER VIII. 

JOVE ON A RAMPAGE. 

It has been stated that Amos Felton was a prognosti- 
cator. He had decreed a storm. He was a servant of the 
air, that is, its physician; he was able to observe the symp- 
toms of its approaching disease. He could correctly give 
an anemography of the winds, test the bronchia of the sky, 
and hold the autopsy of the clouds. He could also auscul- 
tate the air, and note the pulse of the storm. There are 
those even at the present time, who can manipulate the 
weather ; they manufacture and phlebotomize the clouds. 

The morning had been bleak and desolate, the day clear 
and calm, but now real ocular proofs of an approaching 
storm were manifest. More sounds of the distant thunder 
were distinguished, and the clouds on the western horizon 
were gradually increasing, having already veiled the sun, 
while the azure welkin in the zenith was yet unsullied from 
the clouds. The low sounds of rolling thunder faster fell, 
and resounded like a distant cannonade, interspersed with 
brilliant flashes of lightning. Morris apprehended the fast 
approach of the storm, while inwardly he possessed a 
storm of his own ; he wore a mask similar to the somber 
and repellent clouds ; his vast, huge sorrow added to 
heaven’s* heavy clouds more clouds. 

The fleecy, snowy Cumulus clouds were changing into 
lurid, murky Nimbus clouds, and the appalling and overcast 
horizon was expanding. The traveling steed to swifter mo- 
tion was incited, as the brothers kept shrewd vigil over the 
stormy clouds in the west. Nearer and nearer advanced 


68 


the thunder, coughing hoarsely, irritated by the luminous 
sheets and livid streaks of the now contending lighthing, 
with the air still and growing serener still. This sultry, 
sweltry stillness seemed an accessory to the propelling and 
dependent roof of earth ; besides, the air cast off sounds 
like a drum. The pitchy blackness of the clouds, which 
were circling and twirling and curling, already concealed, 
the blue welkin’s cheek above, when a distinct peal of thunder 
burst from overhead as a signal of the approaching angry 
contest. 

Now the leaky breasts of heaven opened, and large, globular 
drops of rain flattened themselves upon the earth. The 
brothers had yet two miles to their home, and were just enter- 
ing the mouth of the woods, which extended before them like 
a thoroughfare — like one of Dante’s circles. Meanwhile the 
lightning was growing more vivid, the thunder more vigorous, 
the canopy more perilous, while a nimble, fretful breeze was 
beginning to stir the foliage. The wind began to command the 
scene, when a rushing sound like the mighty roar of the ocean 
or the huge Niagara was heard approaching. A flaily wind, that 
prologue of the storm, commenced to belabor the trees with 
energy; the silvery rain-drops, which were few and scattered, 
were now falling in volumes; the fiery stripes of the angled 
lightning issued almost incessantly from the foamy mouths of 
the clouds ; and the deafening peals of thunder broke from the 
wrathful sky as from cannons’ mouths. Flying through the 
air in various directions the bewildered birds were borne 
along. 

Now the storm was here and charged in full — a veritable 
tornado. The angry wind was lacerating the branches of the 
trees, the storm king displaying his authority to a trying ten- 
sion. At every blast of thunder the copious, pouring rain, 
with increasing heaviness, fell, and the forest rose and fell and 
rolled and breathed with the agitation of the air. One by one 
a stalwart oak or other giant tree was wrenched from his 


69 


steadfastness, and flung prostrate crashing to the ground. A 
flash of liglitning so weird and vivid as to nearly blind the be- 
stormed brothers, struck a giant hickory close by their side, 
and sending out from its trunk a misty vapor, followed in- 
stantly by a blast of thunder so powerful as to almost rend 
asunder the very heavens. A sudden gust of wind, with 
seismic energy, sent the wrecked branches of the forest hover- 
ing in all directions like flurries of verdant sheets, when a quick, 
harsh, snapping noise and crashing, proved that the scientific 
woodchopper of the forest had felled a leviathan oak immedi- 
ately across the brothers’ path, barely escaping to strike the 
horse in its prostration. This barricaded the road and they 
were imprisoned; before them the prostrate tree, behind the 
flagellating storm. Their steed was shivering like a locust leaf. 

Fiercer and fiercer, stronger and stronger, and wilder and 
wilder grew the storm ; the darkness was gored by the vicious 
flashes of heaven ; the fierce lightning seemed to ride upon the 
clouds, which every moment grew more and more replenished ; 
the thick bolts of thunder grew louder and louder and more 
emphatic ; the pulses of flame and the hiccoughs of sound filled 
the air with an undiminished furnace and harangue ; while the 
xylophagus storm was browsing away the foliage of the 
forest. This Titanic maelstrom of the atmosphere, with its 
pinched, colicky stranging, was striving to exhaust the entire 
heavens. Jove was descending with vigor, and the heavenly 
aquarius appeared to be tapping the very casks of heaven. 
The igneous firmament was a volcano of flame. The crooked 
lightning was incessantly leaping from heaven to earth, and 
flickering in the atmosphere like rolling beads in a kaleido- 
scope. 

The battle of the elements continued without cessation. 
The pealing bolts of thunder reverberated like continued can- 
nonry, amid the damaging volley of hail which now began to 
fall. Even Sagittarius caught the pestilence of atmospheric 
war, and assisted to enfilade the ransacked portions of earth. 


70 


Amidst all this Morris and Amos Felton were undergoing a 
sublime and hazardous siege. 

The beginning of the end of the height of the storm was 
now approaching. It began to abate. The fury of the hail 
was brief, although the tornado proper had been raging for 
twenty minutes. Though the bitterest strife of the clouds was 
past, yet the storm had not wholly subsided. Those battling 
warriors sent down by the savage heavens, were now retreat- 
ing across the forest toward the east. The fire dropping upon 
the earth was now riving the lumpy, knotty, twisty trees in a 
more remote part of the forest, where the menacing canopy of 
earth had now advanced. Happily for the brothers the treach- 
erous clouds had passed, and the agitated breathing from the 
lungs of heaven was fleeing in the distance. The storm had 
sunk to a small commotion ; the shower was fast becoming 
exhausted ; the bitter lightning and the hollow trumpet of the 
thunder were growing more and more feeble, and the disorder 
of the clouds was expiring. 

The road barricaded, the brothers wheeled their horse 
about, and turned their backs upon the disappearing storm, 
when, in the western horizon, they perceived dispersing the 
broken battalions of the clouds, while all around them lie a 
wounded world, mangled, shattered and torn. The brothers 
continued their detour, having farther home by an additional 
two miles. 

At this moment the subdued elements had come almost to a 
cessation. The rainy God had ceased his labor. The blue sky 
in the west was peering through the dissolving veil. On every 
side and in every direction was seen the scene of desolation, 
the frightful carnage of the storm. The muddy road was 
densely strewn with the shivered limbs ; the branchy trees were 
almost stripped to nudation ; the storm had built breastworks 
of fallen trees ; sundry pellets of hail yet lingered in the liquid 
mire ; the ground was covered with motley specks of the dead 
young of birds; and deep gullies run more than topful of 


71 


muddied waters ; the ruthless flood was roaring like a cataract , 
in fact, the earth was telescoped by pushing heaven. 

The sun began to peer upon the earth. He timidly pre- 
sented himself, blushing deeply on the ensanguined scene 
produced by wicked Nature. Upon the hanging clouds in the 
east, was outlined the watery arch, picturesque queen of the 
departed storm, the endorsement of God’s eternal promise. 
This radiant bow, the Omnipotent’s colored garter, was the 
ultimate vestige of the dissolving storm. 

The atmosphere had again acquired its normal equilibrium, 
and the disabled thunder was expiring in the distance. The 
brothers slowly wended their way, for the gullies and brook- 
lets were welt'ering in their onward seething flow, and wash- 
outs numerous lay before them. The robins were dictating 
their epilogues, or, rather, singing their happy dirges to the 
mortal storm. If any living thing in this world is happy after 
a storm, it is surely a robin red-breast. All around and on 
every hand lie the plentiful relics of the storm. 

Morris and Amos Felton reached at last their home, and en- 
tered the farmyard, strewn with branches, as Christ entered 
Jerusalem, only the innumerable hands of the storm had scat- 
tered these branches. The evening sun sank behind the west- 
ern horizon, as if to bedizen, with the coming, sacred shroud 
of night, the amputated and dissevered limbs of the trees and 
vegetation. And as they entered the yard, the anxious mother 
was standing on the porch, with rueful countenance, to behold 
her approaching sons. They arrived safe and .sonud, which 
comforted her immensely. Were she Hecuba with a centenary 
of sons, her love could not have been greater, for ever since 
the commencement of the storm, clouds of gloom, on account 
of the safety of her sons, were suspended over her like the 
heaven’s terrible vapors. 

Whose words are kinder, whose rebuke is briefer, whose 
mind is subtler, whose heart is juster, whose soul is purer, 
whose doctrines are diviner, whose prayers are godlier than a 


72 


noble Christian mother’s for her progeny? When the storm 
took possession of the earth, fear sought control of the un- 
happy mother. She shed no tears while the storm was in 
progress; as chilling fear does not permit the flow of easing 
temper’s tears, but hermetically stops the running sluices. But 
that fear, departing with the storm, gave vent and birth to a 
succeeding tempest, such as issues from the heart’s heaven — 
from the cloudy eyes of a mother’s tender sympathy. Her 
anhydrous eyes began to leak, the abundant moisture fell. 
She paced continually to and fro, her sore eyes bathed with 
creeping sorrow’s waters, eagerly straining to catch a glimpse 
of her bestormed sons. She was Rachel weeping for her chil- 
dren. The hour following the storm was one of fierce sus- 
pense. But what peace of mind fell to her lot when she per- 
ceived her sons — the j ewels of her home — ^proudly rising before 
her in the twilight, like angels from a halo ! 

Morris remembered this storm many years. 

Shortly after the hour of ten, silence saw Morris Felton all 
alone, sedentary at the table. He consumed the midnight 
oil by jotting down a manuscript. This completed, he folded 
the manuscript neatly and enclosed it in a chamber of the 
golden locket. He replaced the locket as the noisy clock was 
telling twelve. He then walked to the window and glanced 
into the silent night. The silvered moonlight had dimmed 
somewhat the jewels of the heavens. He retired shortly after- 
ward, and being weary, was soon ushered into the bower of 
refreshing slumber. 


73 


CHAPTER IX. 


A DAY WITH THOUGHT AND SORROW. 

It was the morning after the storm. They sat down to 
break bread in the absence of Morris, who complained of a 
severe headache, yet concealed his severer heartache. He was 
harried with further complaints. He had not yet arisen, but 
clung to his bed ; he had informed his brother, Amos, that it 
was impossible for him to incline himself to the edge of that 
day's industry. It was late when he arose, and the lucent orb 
of day was high. He glanced from the window, and across 
the valley, observing the sad havoc of the storm. He stood 
there long and looked, longer than he was aware of. When 
one is enveloped in the strong folds of sorrow, one is uncon- 
scious, so to speak. Still looking from the window he saw, yet 
he saw not ; his look was centered into a dreamy stare. 

TEe passions of man comprise the climate of his nature. 
The heart'is a miniature world in itself, containing a vicissitude 
of atmosphere. Morris’s heart was being corroded by salty 
sorrow. He descended the stairs as the shadow on the dial 
was converging on the mark of ten. Proceeding from the 
house he was met by his mother, who thus accosted him: 

“Morris, the cast of your cheek is wan. Amos says that 
illness crept upon you uninvited, or are you merely sick with 
sorrow ?” 

“You peruse my countenance correctly, mother, and as my 
countenance is so is my bosom,” he returned with trembling 
tones. “You say I look not well, but sick. In truth, I am 
sick, and sickly sick, and that sickness is the sickness of sick- 
ness, a sickness of the heart.” 


74 


It seemed to Morris as though his father had snatched from 
him the bread of peace and the wine of hope, yea ! the hun- 
gred soul of life, when he ordered a cessation of love between 
himself and dearer self. 

“You are surely bereft of peace, and one can notice father’s 
unkind words have wounded sorely deep ; and that your 
trouble troubles deep as that sore wound is deep,” his mother 
followed. 

“True, and I am as weak as water. Like Job, my soul is 
weary of my life, my joints are stiff, and my bones are burn- 
ing. Waiting for light, darkness fell upon me. I have sought 
to shuffle off this sorrow, but it has a clutch of strength. My 
love joined harmoniously to my true love’s love only, can strike 
down the shackles of this injury.” 

His coil of sorrow did not shuffle off. Surges of love swell- 
ed the rivers of his heart, and billows of sadness wrought upon 
his soul. He walked away from his mother, and she entered 
the house. 

Morris’s love for Mary Odgen was immense ; yet in its 
youth, what promised his love’s prime? He wounded her as 
she did him — with love. His extreme kindness he coined into 
love, sweet love, supreme, divine love, love for her who was 
his idol, his angel, his heart’s pericardium. And to know the 
price of love one should ask a lover. As long as Morris’s 
love was at legal tender, his mind had peace and freedom ; 
that menaced, his brain lie manacled within a prison’s walls. 

He strolled to the orchard and began to pace the turf be- 
neath the canopy of trees. One could have recognized por- 
trayed on his countenance the lurking venom of dismal sor- 
row’s gloomy shadows. And while he plodded beneath the 
clouds of foliage, aromatic with perfumes, the scent from 
other sources constructed of his mind a lesser though more 
harmful olfactor. Suddenly he heard the dinner bell. And 
when all had appeared, and were congregated together, they 
did justice to themselves and appetites. All save Morris; his 


75 


/neal was principally of the dish of revery; his viands were 
thoughts, his decoction trouble. Little -was spoken. Morris 
absented himself as soon as possible, retired to his room, and 
shortly reappeared attired in his finest livery. 

“Morris, are you going forth to-day?” his father' inquired, as 
they met upon the porch. “When one is ailing he finds his 
better refuge at his home.” 

Morris was looking across the valley, his mind seeming to 
follow his eyes. 

“I will on to the woods for a breath of arborescent fra- 
grance to liniment my cause,” he responded, in an emollient 
tone. “The solitude there may benefit me some.” 

“A better prescription can be found at home,” added the 
father. “The rain storm of yesterday has wrested somewhat 
from your health and harmed the order of your calmness.” 

“I will also tramp to the village, and it may be long ere I 
return.” 

“There is some strategy annexed to this ; an appointment, a 
stroll, a rendezvous, a female, an hour or two of droppings of 
the tongue; I see it all; my son, command yourself with due 
respect.” 

The father suspected a repetition of the preceding Sabbath, 
but did not translate the full language of his heart; his son 
was unconditioned for the reception. 

Morris proceeded toward the farmyard, where were con- 
gregated the feathered, clawed, combed and billed population. 
They all appeared the more querulous because of his dejected 
spirits. He was here confronted by the haughty peacock — 
the pride of the feather — who seemed hollow mockery. He was 
annoyed by the quacking, waddling, awkward ducks, and dis- 
gusted by the squirming-necked, gaggling, goggling, sibilous 
geese. He was not thinking that such discordant music was 
the means of saving the Roman Capital. From the farmyard, 
through the same exit as the previous Sunday, he passed to 
the field where a melee of divers pygmy birds took refuge in 


76 


a silver maple. A piebald bird, crowned with a toupee, was 
suddenly startled to flight at his advance, and the drum of a 
quail and whistle of his mate, assisted the serenade of the at- 
mosphere. In one brief glance, he observed the unwieldy, in- 
flated, nauseous buzzards — those scavengers of carcasses — 
sailing aloft like balloons ; the rapacious hawks — those 
pouncers upon prey — wheeling in circuitous flight, and vigi- 
lant in their foraging designs ; and a tantivy of pigeons speed- 
ing towards the barn. He actually thought he was being 
ridiculed by nature on account of his jilted hope, his wrecked 
peace, and his disturbed conscience. 

He cast his eyes about viewing the opulence of the estate, 
thinking that the merchandise of love to him was greater than 
the merchandise of wealth. “I may have wealth, I may have 
friends, I may have a home ; but without I have Mary Ogden’s 
comfort, I have nothing,” he murmured to himself uncon- 
sciously aloud. 

As he felt, she felt; she was the life of his life, he the life 
of her life; life’s love was in their hearts, love’s life on their 
lips; he was the positive and she the negative factor in the 
electricity of life. 

He was approaching the woods. In the adjacent meadow 
he heard the lowing of the cornute cattle, and the bleating of 
the woolly flocks. All the air was alive and joyous. From 
every brake and dale and bosky dingle emanated the melodious 
pipings of birds. All the various throats of life were rejoic- 
ing on this succeeding day of the storm, and it seemed as if a 
new and ornate leaf had been turned in the immense volume 
of bird life. Morris endeavored to appear deaf to it all, and 
was to some extent, as the harp of love he mostly heard, the 
tune of grief he mostly felt. The sigh of the wind, the rustle 
of the leaf, the tirra-lirra of the lark, the thrill of music, the 
chirp of life, and the throb of nature, appeared to set the gnaw- 
ing tooth of sorrow’s woeful mouth deeper into his creeping 
flesh. 


77 


Entering the grove, he wandered among the stately trees, 
noticing those that were prostrated by the storm. He thought 
his father sought to wrench his love from Mary’s hope, even 
as the haughty temper of heaven the trees that stretched their 
lengths upon the ground. Yet he was too splendid a man, 
too magnanimous a son, to think his father’s heart was buttoned 
up with ire. So slow and solemn was his stride, so stern and 
serious his downward glance, that one would have thought 
he recognized the spacing of his steps, measured by his eyes, 
so sure was the gauge of their exactness. He seemed to be 
noting toll of each successive pace, but his mind was only 
centered on her whose love had awakened the dormant coil 
in his bosom. 

Like the inhabitants of the air, he did not enjoy joy joyfully, 
but despaired over despair despairingly. His hold was gain- 
ing in volume of trouble, which is the sad element of the 
heart, just as depression is the sad weather of the mind. 
Trouble troubled Morris, but he in return was powerless to 
trouble trouble. 

At that moment he was cogitating on this thought : ‘‘One 
cannot meddle with impunity with woman, love, and happi- 
ness.” His father’s command was a demarcation — a Rubicon 
between Mary and himself, — he on one shore, she on the other. 
Was this Rubicon fordable? Would he ford it ? First, was he 
a Caesar, and if a Caesar, a Julius? Even if he was like the 
mighty conqueror whose ambition was so great, and swelled 
till it stretched the world, and followed his father’s precept, he 
would not ; but if sanctified by the impulse of his heart, he 
would, for his pressing love for Mary Ogden was so vast that 
he could have snatched the canoe of Charon or the bark of 
Pluto, and have forded this turbulence, had it been as danger- 
ous as a Charybdis or as dark as sooty Acheron. 

With gradient sadness he continued to approach the locality 
where he had latterly fallen in with Mary. It was then his 
burden increased. He arrived at the prostrate trunk where 


78 


he had been sitting, the Sunday previous, by her side. He 
seated himself with legs across, his right elbow on his knee, 
his chin and cheek within his palm, his bouncing heart almost 
in his throat, his eyes upon the ground, his left hand in his 
left pocket, sorrow in his veins, and serious meditation in his 
brain. His breast was a battlefield of passion, ravaged by a 
pandemonium of emotions. Sedentary beneath the turfy 
shade, on the fallen tree near the brink of the brook, yet 
swollen and vicious from the drenching heavens, he was con- 
tending with the surge of sorrow. 

He had, for several months, walked with Mary through 
the Elysian fields of love — the fire which had heated the pas- 
sions of his life, — but was apt to sit alone, henceforward, on 
the dreary desert wastes of sorrow’s aching nights, where 
many joys would be omitted. Two days sufficed for him to 
acquire a proficient knowledge of sad sorrow’s cheerless vol- 
ume. His eyes finally ranged over the regions of rustling 
leaves, saluting sprays, rapturous birds, and drifting sheets 
of cloudlets. A spasmodic shiver thrilled his being; an inner 
movement was perceptible ; the bubbling spring of his heart 
began to trickle from his eyes. Man cannot shed such tears 
as woman, so Morris’s tears of brine soiled not his cheeks. 
Yet he was gravely pondering. 

He allowed two hours pass while thus reflecting, when he 
arose, walked along the brook, and, discovering a place ford- 
able, crossed, and continued through the wood on a direct line 
toward the village. The cicadae were swarming among the 
foliage, shrilly grating out their sounds ; the cautious wood- 
chuck would steal in sight, glance at him, and disappear with 
headlong plunge into his sepulchral lair ; the salient squirrels 
would scamper oflf before him, scale the trees, and chatter 
amidst their foliage. Not like a nimrod was he strolling through 
' the wood, but was sauntering along like some somnambulist, 
neither moved by the agile forestTife, nor the lulling zephyr’s 
music. Now almost arrived had he at the margin of this 


79 


wooded area. Wild flowers and planfs were waving their 
flags and banners in the drifting breezes. A ring-tailed, puff- 
necked, arch-backed raccoon — prowling bandit of the hennery, 
nocturnal Druid of the timber — lank and emaciated, retreated 
before him with logy gait, oblique and maladroit, and drolly 
scaled a mammoth pillar of the forest. 

Still he pursued his way, the hot world of sorrow a seeming 
Erebus to him. “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,’' 
he murmured, shaking his head. “Being one of the Redeem- 
er’s lambs, and shorn of joy because of love, I hope the wind 
of woe will be assuaged.” About to scale the fence to attain 
the road, he espied a vagrant tortoise, which was retiring 
within its carapace* to bar the doors of its home, too shy for 
the love of company. Picking up the wandering tramp, he 
observed a hieroglyph in the calipee indented. But the true 
origin of the silent brogue he did not know, and reset the 
peaceful turtle down, following his assumed direction and his 
purpose. 

On his entrance to the village, he was hailed by the village 
blacksmith, the man whose steely sinews and iron muscles 
have so developed from the wares he works. 

“Hello, Felton ! you schemer ! are you preparing for a par- 
ley with your best girl to-night?” he shouted tauntingly. “I 
perceive you garbed for a lover’s sweet conspiracy !” 

The insipid raillery of the smoky and begrimed-featured 
smithy embarrassed Morris, for, shaking his head negatively, 
he passed on without a response. 

Could he afford to carry living dead love? Could he inurn 
it to lie useless in his heart’s vaulted chamber ? These thoughts 
were weighing in the balance of his mind ; these were the 
questions he was essaying to compass ; these researches he was 
striving to fathom. Mary’s love was so deeply insphered in 
the orb of his heart, and now his kind, though watchful father, 
had notified him it were necessary to extrude that love. Yet 
he was but a slave of grief, a serf of trouble, a vassal of dis- 
tress, to be forced to drain unwillingly the vessel of tranquillity. 

8o 


He employed several hours of the waning afternoon, while 
walking aimlessly through the village, avoiding all inquisitors 
who would more seriously endamage his nervous inquietude. 
His watch apprised him of the time; it was already after 
seven. He glanced in the direction where the day-king takes 
polite adieu, and found him almost bowed to the hills in the 
horizon. He had eaten no breakfast, partook of a meagre 
dinner, and supper was now past ; he was beginning to feel, 
through this thick dismay, the edge of appetite’s tooth. He 
crept through the beggarly account of empty boxes surround- 
ing the house of groceries, where he entered and provided him- 
self with a paltry sack of that which would befriend his seat of 
hunger. His footsteps were then directed towards Mary 
Ogden’s home. 

He pursued his way slowly and pensively. He saw the 
sun collapse with earth and sky. Sunset is the lover’s silent 
serenade — the rising of the shining heart. “Life, like earth, 
has its sunset,” thought he. A rousant owl glided noiselessly 
before him. The pennons of the west were lengthening into 
gauzy streamers and rainbow-hued lengths of lucid gold. One 
by one he watched the silent stars come out. The various 
sounds of music creeping in his ears, signified the orchestra 
of nocturnal revelers were holding their soiree. Night was 
gradually closing around him, while the gardens of heaven 
were bursting into twinkling spots of gold. The creeping 
dark, with increasing pouring thickness, was extending the 
canopy of night, and the cobalt curtain, deep, dark and dusky, 
flecked with glaring, dazzling stars, was overhanging the 
dead day, as Morris entered the sacred gate to the precincts 
of the home where lived the one to whom the faithful promise 
of his love he had given, and having in the granary of his 
memory and the gallery of his heart yet securely stored and 
registered her enthusiastic love. 


8i 


CHAPTER X. 


THE SPICE OF LOVE SEASONS SADNESS. 

Morris was now, seemingly to him, on holy ground, knowing 
that Mary’s angel feet have trodden this consecrated realm. 
The spell of his grief seemed to be withdrawn. His mind 
was rehearsing the summary of the past few months, and all 
his relations with Mary. He strided forward to the porch and 
paused. Enthroned within the space of that small roorn, where 
his mind preceded him, was Mary Ogden seated by the table 
with The Pilgrim’s Progress open before her. She was not 
reading from her book, but was perusing Morris in his ab- 
sence, as he was her. She was thus contemplating, when she 
was suddenly brought to her customary self, by a low rap 
upon the door. Mrs. Ogden, opening the door, recognized 
the visitor. 

“Good evening to you, Morris !” she said, perceiving it was 
him. “Enter, as we welcome you !” 

Welcomed by Mary’s mother, Morris entered. 

Mary, at the sudden rap and entrance of Morris, was fright- 
ened, grew pale, blushed, and was happy, all in as brief a 
space of time as did require him to glance round the room. 

“This day was more delightful than the day preceding,” 
began Mrs. Ogden, as an exordial thought. 

“Truly was it!” replied Morris. “Yesterday’s storm was 
A severe one, with a pulse strong and a fever high.” 

“Was it not a cruel storm?” asked Mary, glancing softly at 
Morris. “It unbraced the finest of our apple trees, which 
leaves us now but one.” 

Some slight injury had befallen the Ogden home. Besides 


the wreck of the apple tree, a section of the roof belonging to 
the porch was torn, and the chimney of the house demolished. 

“Indeed, Mary,” he observed in reply, “I saw several Titans 
of the wood razed by the ferocity of the storm. Amos and I, 
returning from the city, were securely ensnared thereby, and 
almost caught beneath a falling idol of the forest. Mary, you 
can scarcely apprehend ; it seemed as if the heavens were 
spilling volumes of fire, and to again extinguish it, were 
drenching it with floods, yes, oceans of water. Really it ” 

“Was it not a wet and windy atmosphere, mingled with a 
grand display of fire?” Mary interfered. 

“Yes, and it appeared the Plutonian and Neptunian gods 
were with each other waged in combat. Hereafter, it will be 
my watchful desire to evade subsequent storms.” 

“O, actually, Morris !” asserted Mary, “mother and I were 
so affrighted, it smote our hearts with terror, and struck fear 
into our souls ; we were almost bewildered like a day bird in 
the night or a night bird in the day. We expected that every 
moment would bring our house destruction down.” 

“When the timbers of the roof sheltering the porch began 
to snap,” interpolated Mrs. Odgen, “then my alarm was great, 
as I thought the beating storm would surely cause our house 
to fall. And what added to my terror was my mind reverting 
to the house that was- built upon the sand and fell, which fall 
was so great.” 

Thus continued the conversation, finally touching upon other 
subjects. And as the evening was pleasant, Morris solicited 
Mary forth into the balmy air. As it was two evenings since 
the plenilune, the circle-faced moon — the alchemist of night — 
was just emerging from the hilly east. Many of the stars 
concealed themselves beneath the azure turban on the appear- 
ance of graceful Luna. 

“How splendidly the gaudy moon appears above yon eastern 
wood?” Mary began. “She is truly the queen of night’s pale 
light.” 


83 


“She looks upon us now as if she were a golden globe, but 
will shortly turn to silver,” he returned. 

Mary’s joy knew no bounds. She was happy all day long, 
and to be now in the presence of her love, was a treat for her. 
Morris had surprised her in the wandering of her mind, but 
she directly recovered her wonted sangfroid. 

Nature seemed to have enclothed herself in her most brill- 
iant livery of evening, adorned herself with radiant light, and 
to have commanded forth her melodious revelers, especially 
for the gazing eyes, greeting ears, dancing hearts, and loving 
souls of this endearing couple. The vapors of sorrow, and 
the dense mists of revery that enshrouded Morris, had vanish- 
ed, effaced by the sunshine of his companion’s cheerfulness. 

“I am pleased that you have brought me company to assist 
me through the evening,” she spoke, her voice happy and as 
cheerful as herself. “My mind reflected upon you, Morris, 
the moment that your sound of knocking permeated the room. 
Your presence to me is like that gentle moon ; it gladdens me.” 

“Your eyes speak plainer than your language, in whose 
bosoms, Mary, I can perceive heaven imaged. Your splendor 
vies with heaven itself.” 

This statement pressed sweet smiles to seek upon her coun- 
tenance their abode, and her heart grew fertile with redoubled 
joy. Those words were, to Mary, gems of love, for she knew 
they dropped from his truthful tongud. 

In a corner of the yard by the picket fence, stood a vacant 
bench. This bench seemed, like Hamlet’s ghost, to beckon 
these two associated souls. It desired not to impart a dreadful 
history, but wished, perhaps, to embosom some of their secrets. 
Nevertheless, it stood there in solitude, and sustained against 
the apple-tree that remained yet upright and in verdure. 

“Let us seat ourselves,” said Mary, taking Morris by the 
hand and proceeding to the seat. “It seems as though such 
nights were shaped for persons to receive the favors of rejoic- 


84 


ing. So ! Here can the joyful sounds of evening’s music seek 
out us.” 

“The piece of nature happy by my side, makes me much 
more merry music, and enchants my senses of delight, thrice 
more than the tastes of night-time murmur.”- 

The sweet girl blushed in the modesty of her joy. 

“Those words, Morris, are like foot-steps guiding me to 
your heart. You speak sweetly with a true tongue.” 

“When the heart is true the tongue is true,” he answered. 

Morris was holding within his hand a velvet hand of hers, 
while he looked into her face with softened eyes. When a 
man’s countenance is filled with pleasantness, his mind with 
wisdom, his heart with righteousness, his soul whh holiness, 
and his life with understanding, then is he worthy of any 
woman’s love. Morris, in Mary’s eyes and apprehension, was 
this ideal man. 

They were enjoying the evening fondly. Sweeter than the 
flowers, fresher than the dew, brighter than the moon, clearer 
than the sky, calmer than the air, fairer than the stars, was the 
love of their pellucid souls. 

“Your eyes, Mary, are true indices to your emotions,” he 
continued after a brief pause. “Your smiles are a panacea to 
comfort and to cure a heart diseased with trouble. And how 
can I refrain from assembling at so good an altar to receive 
such praise?” 

Love follows beauty as the earth the sun, and like the sun 
their loves did warm the worlds of their enjoyments. Many 
smiles, much love, and true hearts, they had shortly since com- 
menced and continued to interchange, and neither of them, as 
they planned, would play the truant to the other’s love. 

“Morris, your affection is an ornament to grace my face,” 
the peaceable girl sweetly remarked. “It is a crown for my 
head, glasses for my eyes, a cosmetic for my cheeks, a neck- 
lace for my neck.” 

“And what fortune for your lips?” he inquired triflingly. 

85 


“How cherry red your lips of velvet are, and if they be cherry 
ripe, permit me to pluck a kind, a gentle, one simple, loving 
kiss.” 

She was silent, but her eyes spoke. Silence of words signi- 
fies a consent of speech ; her reticence testified approval. With 
this he encircled Mary’s waist, and neatly printed with his lips 
a kingly kiss upon her queenly own, which noble act she did 
credit with a blush of modesty. Still, Nature adorns the earth 
for life’s enjoyment, and paints the human cheeks for love’s 
enjoyment. 

“I have heard it said,” he said, “that stolen kisses are the 
sweetest, but I would that thought discredit. For when two 
co-operate in 'this they then out-sweeten all the stolen strategies 
in the art of osculation. What is your opinion, Mary ?” 

She looked up at him and smiled. 

“I think you know too much already,” she followed, smiling 
through her blushes. 

“Mary, your love will be as indelible to my heart as your 
name to my mind, or your beauty to my eyes. I have sought 
for your affection and I have discovered it ; and with the 
covenant of your tongue, and the sweet relic of your lips — 
that seal of love, token of joy, — I will continue to cling to that 
refulgent love so long as I adhere to life.” 

With this again he kissed her, repeating the proof of love. 
She was happy, joyful; a jubilee of ecstasy was in her heart. 
She was radiance beneath the tender touch of moonlight. She 
glanced upward, her eyes invading the starry vault. The few 
faint pale stars were occasionally concealed beneath wigs of 
clouds, and the moon was fleeing across the sky pursued by a 
star. Her fancies appeared to be strolling with the clouds 
among the hiding stars. Rapture enveloped her like night it- 
self, and she was really the fragrant flower of this brilliant 
night. Morris was happy, though not in a delirium customary 
with harmonious lovers. On the whole, these couple were com- 
bined in a band of wholesome love, a tie of faith, and whatever 


86 


would interfere with, or sever the clinging tendrils of their 
love, would seriously stub their happy hearts. 

Morris’s final sentence was to Mary as the looks of golden 
fruit upon a silver tree. She observed : 

“You are not subject to flattery, or I would discredit your 
thought else. A stream of truth from the well of truth is 
wholly truth.” 

“It is the true truth, the true palpable truth, and truthfully 
told. Further, Mary, I measure your affections by my own. 
Like a clairvoyant, I can peruse you cap-a-pie, and drink like 
thoughts your love. You are a painted wonder, the brightest 
star in the galaxy of life. My love budded in the light of 
your beauty, blossomed in the day-dreams of your kindness, 
and ripened in the sunshine of yaur smiles.” 

Her tender eyes— diamonds equipped with love — sought 
his. Yet here a pause ensued, for they were both silent a mo- 
ment. It was a tranquil, inspiring, blessed moment when 
solemn slumber was supplemented to the throbbing, thrum- 
ming heart of nature, although the drowsy and sonorous hum 
of insects — that doleful lullaby of night — was the sole weird 
melody that permeated the stilly atmosphere. 

“Oh, Morris!” Mary suddenly ejaculated, “how forgetful 
am I. When last we parted, what reception did your father 
extend to you on your arrival home? You know last Sabbath 
he surprised us and, perhaps, himself.” 

Morris calmly glanced at her and smiled. Little did she 
suppose, with that inquiry, she touched the keynote of sor- 
row’s serious instrument, as all the unhappy recollections of 
the two days past, crowded into his mind like sheep into a 
fold, swallows into a chimney, or ancient thoughts into a 
drowning mortal’s mind. Mary’s company had sufficiently 
sweetened the bitter edge of his reflections, but this research 
broke again the ice of sorrow’s dismal lake. 

“How he conducted himself when I returned?” he interro- 
gated. “He was mummy for silence, sachem in gaze.” 


87 


“I knew he would comport himself with unconcern at your 
affairs \” 

“The succeeding day I expected words, however, but this 
was also sister to the former day.” 

“Your father is so kind ! he must, indeed, have fallen to your 
favor !” 

“But on Tuesday evening ” 

“Why, was not that evening also with the others in rela- 
tion ?” 

His wand of speech clove to the roof of his mouth ; he was 
for awhile silent; his silence, together with the picture of his 
face, enlightened Mary upon the theme discussed. 

“Pray, Morris, what of Tuesday evening?” 

“Everything!” 

“What mean you by everything?” 

“All! love, joy, liberty, chaos! yea, life itself!” 

“Expound it all to me, O kind and misused Morris,” be- 
seeched she serious softly, encircling his neck with gently soft 
embrace, and looking with almost tearful meekness in his 
countenance. 

“It were a bad tale goodly told, were I it to unfold,” he ob- 
served grievingly. “But embrace me not so tightly, Mary, 
for by embracing me, my woeful thoughts do also you em- 
brace.” 

“Have we not pledged our faiths, our loves, our lives ? Then 
withhold nothing I desire to know, for the thought that you 
endure, can I also suffer.” 

“Mary, ’tis hard to bear ; to bear 'tis hard ; but as it is, it 
is,” he followed with deep emotion, and further propounded: 

“I will recount it with a speedy haste; it were too hot 
a weight to retain it in one’s mouth too long.” 

“Proceed, Morris,” she commanded, yet she was really 
nervous and excited some. 

“On Tuesday evening, did father break his mind to me, say- 


88 


ing, I must not only forsake you as an associate, you, Mary, 
my heart’s fair queen, but cut off my affection for you!” 

She heaved from her bosom a hearty sigh. 

“That I must shake off all allegiance to you.” 

A second and more vigorous sigh. 

“More yet with all this ; this all with yet more ; he will dis- 
inherit me of every thread of wealth if the proud knot of mar- 
riage binds us, or even if I continue to lavish proper love upon 
my only angel of all the world.” 

More sighs combined to sobs and teary orbs of love. 

“He further hints that you are humble ; but that is a weak, 
straddling, a starved thought — a thought as crumbling as the 
fire’s wasted fuel.” 

“It is true, Morris, you are rich and I poor ; you stand high 
and at the head of society, I sit low and at society’s feet. Yet 
the wealth of your presence makes me also wealthy, your 
standing also elevates me; coupled, we may invade society, 
you the heart, I the soul.” 

She pronounced this statement weakly; her tone was low 
and tremulous, as these heavy tidings wreathed her heart. 

Mary was jovial the entire day, and her tasks were lightened 
with song, her heart strengthened with the thought of love. 
She was gay and lively in conversation with her mother, while 
yet her thoughts were caressing Morris. He was in the front 
of her mind, the van of her heart, the foremost of her soul. 
She thought : “Love shines from man’s heart as the sun from 
God’s sky.” In the midst of her dream, a cloud had secretly 
arisen and canopied her pleasantness. It seemed to extin- 
guish the splendor of the moon and the lustre of the night, 
as well as her blithesome spirits. She did not speak as Juliet’s 
nurse, but simply said : “In the midst of all my happiness there 
intervenes this night a somber cloud to smother up my hopes 
and suffocate my joy.” 

These lovers had constructed the silver temple of love 
through the pure and golden days of happy time, and were 


89 


replenishing it with the mellow moonlight streaming in upon 
their mingled joys, and shutting out the peering faces of the 
stars. There, beneath the joyous wings of watchful, wakeful 
night ; the droning songs of green-voiced humming insect life ; 
the gulfs and seas and bays of heaven’s azure dome ; the em- 
bracing arms of vigor’s bracing air ; the elements now subdued 
and tamed since the savage storm ; and the faint and lulling 
breeze of social evening’s rhythmic air ; there, beneath all this 
the soft and faintly surging voices of the gentle lovers — sit- 
ting happily on that welcome bench beneath the busy night — 
were delightfully cradled by their swelling heart’s noblest and 
brightest impulses. 

But as evening sped apace so fleet, their jolly hearts 
stumbled at a parent’s severe impediment, that re-arose to 
darken the threshold of their joy. 


90 


CHAPTER XL 


FROM NOONDAY JOY TO MIDNIGHT ANGUISH. 

And now our moral hero and our heroine of virtue were 
lamed in joy and crippled in peace. Mary clasped her hands. 

“Then your father will not permit you to purchase happi- 
ness in my company?” she spoke inquiring. 

“He is strong against our meeting — a prop to bar me 
hence,” he answered. “But how can I endure life without 
your aid? Life is worth living,, having your influence to 
season its bitterness.” 

Morris maintained happy control of her love, while she in 
return, held possession of his. Nature had endowed her coun- 
tenance with beauty, her eyes with radiance, yes ! her tongue 
with a delicacy of language; and experience had conceded to 
his manners courtesy, to his behaviour gentleness, ah ! to his 
nature morality. The voices of each were as the genial 
breezes of Araby, their smiles like Italy’s sunshine, their lives 
as promising as Ceylon’s climate. So each possessed suffi- 
cient qualities' to govern and maintain the otlier’s love. But 
as the crop of sorrows is expanding, what will the harvest be ? 

At the suggestion of -Morris they now rose, egressed from 
the mantle of shadows that veiled them, and moved across the 
yard. They were startled by a deft flitting in proximity to 
their faces, when, their eyes following the movement, they 
recognized a bat or flittermouse — sable spectre of the night. 
They viewed through their sad dismay, the queer maneuvers 
and zigzag gesticulations of the fury aeronaut, performing 
on webby wings, its antics, capers, and contortions. They 
gazed a moment in silent awe, upon its vivid, sauntering mo- 


91 


tions, as it dissected the atmosphere into figures geometrically, 
while catching flies and gnats and moths in its elastic, awning- 
like tail — that cunning snare for provender — to pamper the 
craving of its gnawing little stomach. 

Their eyes again collided; she was amazed at the trouble 
depicted on his countenance, while he looked pityingly upon 
a face creased with sorrow. 

“Mary, do not let me startle you Morris began with pathos. 
“I have been seeking an artifice by which we might embrace 
our lives in happiness, but none have I invented. My father 
has had his say, my kind father has had his unkind, say — a 
harmful say to me — but I will now have mine. I have con- 
cluded to-day, that, being harnessed to Mary Ogden’s chariot 
of love, the wheels of the heart must unceasingly rotate. With- 
out her comfort, life to me is blank. And now to reveal 
my father’s fault torch-like to his mind, I am determined to 
sojourn some months from home — unhappy now to me — and 
wander out into the huge vastness of the world. If I remain 
at home it will be necessary I kiss father’s harsh command 
as a hound his master’s hand, a pupil his preceptor’s rod, a 
culprit the sentence of his magistrate, or a subject the law of 
his king. Yet one supreme law certifies we should our parents 
to obey, but to conform to father’s command is to disobey my 
truthful heart. I cannot serve both father and the riches of 
my bosom. I am acquainted with father’s nature, and if I be 
not foul deceived, my leaving home will so affect his heart as 
to urge him don a new apparel of ideas, some of which may 
tend to my designs. You are aware, Mary, that father is ripe 
with age; therefore, I do not wish to hasten his decline, nor 
even mother’s, but will secretly notify him, by vanishing from 
his presence, that he has adorned his son’s head with a crown 
of thorns, pierced his heart with a javelin of cacti, and be- 
dizened his path with a prickly carpet of thistles by his decree 
and his contention.” 

Meanwhile, Mary fancied a Webster in her lover, and had 


92 


observed him closely. She also noted the intonation of his 
voice, and the trembling of his cheeks and lips as he approach- 
ed the terminus of his narration. She also saw collecting 
large, watery drops, that hung between the fringed curtains 
of his eyes. She was overcome. The salty tears coursed 
down her cheeks. All her former joy was swimming in that 
flood of tears. 

* “Come, Mary, dry your tears,” he spoke soothingly. “My 
absence will labor to achieve my presence, if life endures.” 

She followed his direction ; she attempted to eradicate the 
traces of her tears. 

“Indeed, Morris, how sadly do you speak !” she said, ob- 
serving him intently. “What bitter words you speak. Your 
intention is a wild imagination — a dark scheme forged in the 
furnace of your mind.” 

“Only our company shall be divided for a while, not our 
bosoms.” 

“I cannot brook your departure. Morris, why not remain 
and cheer me with your love?” 

“Let us advance toward the road, as the time draws nigh 
for my departure !” 

“Stay your haste, Morris, for such haste can be made 
slowly,” she ordered. 

With arms interlaced they proceeded forward; the grassy 
carpet received their sorry footsteps! The sorrowing Mary 
inclined heavily on the grieving Morris’s arm, and thus he 
encountered a portion of her weight in sorrow. 

“I entreat you stay! Stay!” she pleadingly urged, “and 
seek an arbitration! You will not consent to have me perish! 
You are the partner of my joy, the guard of my love, the pro- 
tector of my life, and, depriving me of the balm of your pres- 
ence, I shall surely perish.” 

They stopped before the gate. The vacant road, beneath the 
moon, appeared lugubrious to them. 

“Mary,” he said, “it rends my conscience, and contracts my 


93 


veins even, to know that I am compelled to renounce my 
home, and dear, good mother, for a brief cycle, and, above all, 
to forfeit my presence from you.” 

Morris was observing her with eyes of pity ; his heart was 
sore, his conscience bleeding. Her countenance was softened 
with weeping. He ascertained how passionately he loved this 
gentle beauty. He discovered that love, like a rose-bush, is 
supplied with numerous thorns, as he was one who loved with 
his love, and lived with his life. 

“Did you speak?” she breathed. “What have you said? I 
am surely not in a trance? You cannot decamp from home? 
Do not remove the genial climate of your association ; you are 
to me Bahama.” 

“It is for the benefit of you and me.” 

“When do you embark upon this voyage of vengeance?” 

“Immediately on my departure from this yard and you.” 

“Morris, you cannot, dare not go.” 

“I will go to-night.” 

“You shall not go because ” 

“I will go this very night.” 

She was silenced; her sweet tongue melted into reticence; 
her eyes floated in their waters. 

“The hour must be near the time when midnight looks from 
the sky,” he continued shortly, sending his eyes to the moon, 
and across the ceiling of heaven. 

The tearful damsel, weak w-ith grief, seized hold of the lapels 
of his coat and with an angel’s beseeching tongue said : 

“It is impossible for me to be thus sundered from you, hand 
from hand, heart from heart, love from love, soul from soul, 
and voice from voice.” 

She fell upon his neck and broke down entirely, sobbing 
aloud, her grieving sorrow seasoned with the stuflf of damp- 
ness, briny as the ocean’s drops. 

“Morris,” she muttered, with the plea of a Juliet, “I beseech 


94 


you to remain and comfort me in life, rather than grieve for 
me in death.” 

Her trembling lips were glued to his trembling cheek ere 
the trembling Mary was aware of it. Morris saw her en- 
veloped in an aureole of beauty, her beauty increasing with her 
compassion. She appeared to be as gentle as sleep, as lovely 
as the night: she was only stupified bv sorrow. His arms en- 
circled her, and drawing her gently to his bosom, he dropped 
upon her lips love’s tender kiss. 

“Verily, Mary,” tendered he, “this is an eventful period of 
our lives. Why, my. dear, what has possession of you now?” 
he exclaimed, suddenly excited. “You tremble and are pale 
and growing paler !” 

She endeavored to smile, but they were sad and solemn 
smiles mingled with tears. 

“Alas, Morris ! my sad heart and brooding mind will under- 
mine me quite. It will dig for me a grave.” 

“Hark!” ejaculated Morris, “the clock is telling off the 
time.” They hearkened and their straining ears were satisfied. 
“The tongue of time says mid-night,” he followed, then glanc- 
ing down upon the moonlit ground. 

Her eyes fell upon him, as across them she quickly passed 
her hand as if to close their sluices, and glanced upward at 
the dimly shining lambent lamps of night. Her attitude ex- 
pressed a near hope, his no near hope. 

Morris’s pocket contained, as we have seen, an excellent 
golden locket; it was the one purchased on the day of the 
storm. He withdrew it from its place of concealment, and 
soon the yellow ornament dangled from Mary’s snowy neck. 
Though it possessed no magic, this mascot was the sorcerer 
of her speech ; she could not speak a word. 

“What mean you, Morris,” she shortly managed to gasp 
forth. 

She would have smiled, but the action was too serious. And 
just then their attention was laid claim to by a prowling 


95 


screech-owl, which interrupted them with his dismal lamenting 
and complaining to the moon and night. 

“How very sad those doleful notes appear?’' she sighing 
said. “That drear musician of the night, with such dark music, 
must have been created to serenade those in sorrow.” 

“The day is long since deceased, and yet that belated owl 
sings his dirge far into the night.” 

He hurled a missile at the bird and frightened him to flight. 

“He sings the funeral of my joy and peace,” solemnly the 
tearful Mary said. “This locket have I for your fond remem- 
brance ; how will you remember me ?” 

“Your name and love and beauty are inscribed in my heart, 
which will be my sweet, my great, my sorrowful, yet divine re- 
membrance of you. They will never be forgotten.” After a 
short silence, he continued : “Mary, this will be our final meet- 
ing for a time, so let us embrace.” 

“How your polar speech chills me !” she remarked, as ten- 
derly as sorrow did permit. “But in your embrace, wintry 
chills of grief melt into genial summer. But you away, what 
ami?” 

“Truly, Mary, this freezing speech almost bursts my heart 
and cracks my tongue. But I must go ; the night goes march- 
ing on.” 

A painful expression flashed across her face, and tears be- 
gan again, which, for a while, were at their ease. Indeed the 
tide of tears was rolling thick and rising fast. 

“My soul must bear its pain in silence. This parting may 
mean eternity to me. Often will I peruse the work of Scripture 
until you return. Morris, promise me to do likewise. We will 
then be holding consultaton, though at a distance.” 

Sighs followed sighs, sobs sobs, and tears tears followed, 
until she was all but a cloud in weeping. 

“I will follow your advice ; but, Mary, remain you also true 
to me!” 

His lip was a lip of truth, which well she knew. 


96 


“My heart is a safe, an Aladdin’s cave, in which my love is 
locked, and you possess the key. It can be unlocked by you 
alone.” 

This was an unnecessary remark, as her tears and grief 
were a sufficient promise. Her gentle sweetness was ushered 
to him as light from the perpendicular moon; yet over it all 
was too plainly visible the mask of sadness. Grief was a para- 
site on grief, on sorrow sorrow grew; yet heart maintained 
heart, and love love sustained. He recognized the emotions of 
her soul in her eyes, and the very heart of that soul was wafted 
forth with her message. Her bosom labored like the tide, 
while her scalding tears — tears that would have occasioned 
the pale faces of angels to blush — ^^literally gushed from the 
outpouring of their sources. Morris touched, with the concave 
of his hand, her fevered cheeks, which were first rosy with 
delight, then pale with anguish, now fevered with grief. She 
buried her face in his bosom ; and were his bosom a cooling 
fountain, she would have plunged in her head. He could 
scarcely stand upright, the rapids of despair unsteadying him. 

“Mary,” he said tremulously, “farewell, and yet again fare- 
well ; yet it shall not, will not, dare not, be forever.” 

She raised her face to his, her eyes toward heaven ; he 
looked into her countenance, it was sublime. They exchanged 
kisses — kisses which reached their souls. She condoled with 
him and he with her. He unlaced himself from that divine, 
and, perhaps, final embrace, and took his exit from the gate, 
and their exode for the present had terminated, or, perhaps, 
originated. 

“Farewell !” was all the answer that followed him, as she 
could speak no more. He suddenly faded in the distance, but 
to her it seemed he glided from life. He had departed, and she 
remained alone to night and to herself, like one congealed to 
earth. Her tears had ceased to flow. 


4 


97 


CHAPTER XIL 


TROUBLES OF THE HOME. 

The lazy gait of night dispersed before the sprightly pace 
of morn, the sim gliding forth gorgeously. Whatever inci- 
dents occur, time still pursues his course with an unchangeable 
degree. The world is simply a huge glass of time, through 
which run the sands of life. 

The two elder members of the Felton household were at the 
usual industry of their vocations. Amos Felton, as he arose, 
perceived at once the absence of Morris from his haven of 
slumber, but did not suspect that any foreign motives had in- 
duced him to tacitly forego his home. He descended the 
stairs tranquilly, and strided to the barn, where he began to 
dispatch his customary tactics of the morn. Returning to the 
house, his father accosted him. 

‘‘Does Morris yet ail that he fails to stir him forth to-day?” 
he inquired. “He must be like a woodchuck, torpid in his 
lodge, that he adheres so closely there.” 

“He did not seek the comfort of his bed the night departed,” 
he responded. 

Cyrus Felton stared amazed at this, while his wife appeared 
convulsed with consternation. She abstracted huge import 
from that decree, as she was naturally schooled on the ideas 
that haunted her son’s mind. 

“I fear that Morris has come to trouble,” she remarked, 
pale with agitation. “Extreme sorrow sought refuge in his 
heart, and dire thoughts clutched their talons upon his mind ; 
and such ado against nature forebodes no peace. But me- 
thought a sound of Morris entering the house sometime in the 


98 


night stole into my ears. I will inspect his chamber, and 
endeavor to unearth his secret.” 

Meanwhile, Amos and his father fell upon the breakfast 
table, while the mother was plotting a scrutiny of the different 
apartments. 

'‘I also have a vague picture of Morris’s entrance during 
the night,” Amos remarked. 

The father was reticent, thinking his sentiments secretly; 
he was debating with his conscience. The veil of unconcern 
seemed to have been snatched abruptly from his mind, and 
a medley of thoughts, like a band of savages whooping to the 
massacre, were storming the valleys of his mind. They wor- 
ried him and were as tomahawks to his brain. 

“If Morris has forsaken home, perhaps it is due to my ar- 
raignment? Nevertheless, my conscience was my monitor 
and directed all my actions,” was the foremost thought of his 
mind. 

His wife returned. The truth lie susceptible upon her coun- 
tenance, as she was in an olio of confusion, and tears bedewed 
her eyes. 

“The most of his apparel is gone,” she sadly said. “His 
drawer of the bureau is untreasured of all its valuables, and 
he has surely retired to the outside world to find a home.” 

Amos, though more silent than usual, did not mar his quiet. 
He departed from the house and proceeded to his tasks: But 
Cyrus Felton was now introduced to the preface of his dis- 
consolation ; the volume of its trials were to follow. His mind 
was running full — a reservoir of injury. He was a man not 
given to trouble or worry, though now he believed that 
Morris had deserted home. 

“If it be true that Morris himself has sundered from our 
presence, it is a great calamity that befalls our home,” re- 
marked the sire gloomily. “He was the chiefest soul of our 
abode.” 

“Husband,” his wife added, “you are the author of his woe. 


99 


You should have leavened your mind with the oil of patience, 
and not have wafted forth such strong commands to seek his 
overthrow.” 

He knew he was responsible for the actions of his son, as 
he was attorney in procuring the divorcement of his home. 
He fancied his son hasty in his folly. 

The day was growing old ; it was nearing its close. Dewy 
eve appeared, and gliding night began to draw the silhouette 
of darkness. Morris had not ventured home, which absence 
filled the household with impatience. 

‘This is a sore trial and our son does punish home se- 
verely,” said Mrs. Felton gloomily to her husband. 

“It is an unwelcome surge that seethes us with the foam 
of discontent. Morris has apparently unyoked himself from 
home, owing to the precept given him. It were sufficient for 
him to devise such passage in his mind, but to transact the 
deft deed of such exploit is a burden to his parent.” 

“You administered a wrong upon him,” she retorted grave- 
ly. “I invited you to a pleasant trial and a wise one on that 
argument. With my eyes I always perceived Mary Ogden 
an excellent mirror by which our son could have detected a 
true image of his deeds and worth.” 

The conversation continued with sorrow written on their 
faces. They could not perforate the veil of mystery. 

The evening wore away, and night hung heavy upon the 
earth. Again the day broke, and Morris did not return. 

During the day Amos Felton, himself a sort of Cossack — a 
guerilla on horse back — rode past the Ogden mansion, and 
recognized Mary. Thus Mary was situated, and Morris was 
not; such was the fact acquired. The matter began to blaze 
abroad and find its way to every quarter. 

Days followed days. Spring had long since departed, sum- 
mer had ceased to be, and the golden colors of autumn were 
flaming and flaring in the fading sunshine and the decaying 
warmth. It was Saturday in the afternoon, October almost 


lOO 


wasted. The laborers were in the field wrenching the vege- 
table gold from out the mine of husks. The day was tropical 
and serene. The atmosphere was disturbed with not a breath 
of breeze, scarcely a murmur. The thrill of joy fraternized 
with the heart of every mortal. Yet one there was, whose 
countenance corresponded with his silver hair ; his heart was 
identical with face and hair. It was Cyrus Felton, his haggard 
features caused by the darkness of his heart. He was re- 
turning from the field where the grain was peaked upon the 
ground. 

As he entered the yard, a female approached him, proceed- 
ing from the road. He could not recognize her countenance, 
which was obscured beneath her bonnet. She paused, and 
was about to speak; words failed her, her tongue did not 
translate her mind. Yet her modesty and appearance informed 
him who she was. As she hesitated to familiarize her purpose, 
Cyrus Felton cast the. first stone of thought to set speech mov- 
ing. 

“What impulse, lady, brings you to my presence and what 
is your desire?” 

Yet she faltered, but presently she raised her head, and 
Cyrus Felton looked upon a face weltering in tears. 

“What news have you from Morris ?” she inquired pitifully. 

In his presence stood the girl whose love he had denied his 
son, and he himself the Juggernaut that wrecked their hearts 
and their contentment. 

“We have no tidings of our son,” he responded. “His pres- 
ence now would be like manna.” 

She wept aloud, a veritable goddess of tears and sobs, and 
moved to a contiguous cherry tree, against which she inclined, 
to prevent herself from falling. An epistle from her lover 
would have been a sanicle to her. 

“I can no longer suffer this dismay. Life to me is now but 
seeking death.” 

This heroine was a conqueror; she had subjugated this man. 


lOI 


Never had he conceived the real image of an angel until now. 
This elegant maiden, with face decorated with diamonds of 
pity, and tongue adorned with jewels of tenderness, and eyes 
vestured with the expression of hope, filled his soul with a 
new religion — the religion of humility. 

“I entreat pardon at your hands,” Cyrus followed. “You 
are the very cream of consolation.” 

“Morris’s absence signifies my death, his presence were a 
prop to my life,” she returned, retreating from his presence. 
She was returning home ; her information was acquired — in- 
formation that was sorrowfully harmful. 

The old man was stationed to the spot like a statue of sor- 
row. When does not woman’s warmest tears melt the frozen 
heart of man? Cyrus Felton, though a frigid pillar of grief, 
possessed a burning sensation inwardly, as sorrow was grop- 
ing through his being. He was at once in the equinox of tor- 
ment and the solstice of anguish. Every scruple of his former 
discontent was now out-weighed by ounces of distress. Grief 
was never seconded by him; it was an uninvited visitor. The 
world now seemed but a fossil of darkness. He appeared to 
be wrapped in chaos. His brain was punctured with piercing, 
painful thoughts, and his brow wreathed with clouds of agony. 
O, why, like the reptile, did his sorrow not latibulize? What 
a holocaust of suffering this heart-wounded damsel ignited in 
his bosom? His deliberation affixed him statue-like upon the 
earth, and wooed him from the thought of the world. 

And the dial-plate had received the slanting kisses of the 
sphery ball many days since Mary Ogden’s visit. The earth 
was overspread by winter’s fleecy sheet, and the north was 
moaning around the angles of the house. Cyrus Felton had 
retired early. On this especial night, Amos' Felton abided the 
evening, and he and his mother were alone. 

“Amos,” she began, “your judgment should so shape your 
mind as to conduct your conscience along the brighter, better 
and grander side of life instead of the debaser.” 


102 


“Why, mother, do you constantly apprise me of my habits 
of doing in this life?” he asked pertly, slightly vexed. “I de- 
sire not to harm my happiness by weeding out the pleasure 
this glorious world affords. I steer my vessel of delight not 
beyond a reasonable depth, but navigate the channel where 
sail the comrades of my voyage.” 

His mother was abashed at this unfeeling comment. She 
labored to have him forsake his channel of plebeian worldli- 
ness, but being so warmly attached to the delights the world 
afforded, he was powerless to surrender its joys or murder its 
pleasures. Nevertheless, she hoped to convert her recreant 
son. 

“You should have befe)re you the image of the future,” his 
mother again contended. “You should reflect upon your 
brother, Morris ! how he was devoted to his home ! how lofty 
his manners ! how loyal his heart ! and how pure his life ! But 
he is absent now, his chair is vacant, though his name is with 
us, and his remembrance is seated in our hearts. He has left 
us alone with our disconsolation, and rambles about the world 
alone. He has left us, and, perhaps, forever. You should 
maintain in your mind, a portrait of your brother. Weep for 
him absent, mourn for him homeless, lament for him lost, yet 
pray for his return. He was the flower of his friends, the 
ornament of his home. Your father and mother have traversed 
the plain of a lengthened journey, and are now clambering 
along the plateau of age. They will soon drop beyond to all 
eternity.” 

A suspense followed, during which sorrow flowed from a 
mother’s eyes, sobs burst from her heart, . and grief exuded 
from her soul. She separated with the globules of recollection 
pertaining to her son, as the colander a liquid. She was 
mantled with a gown of sadness; reverie was her coiffure, 
anxiety her basque; her despairing bosom almost rent the 
corset of her hope — the hope of re-uniting with her son. She 
continued sorrowfully: 


103 


‘'After we shall have lain down in death, and your brother, 
Morris, has not yet endowed his home with his secret, you 
will in certainty, be the heir and sole inheritor of this entire 
affuent demesne. But if you propose not to create a revolution 
in the affairs of your disordered life, how will you be able to 
cope with the management of these prolific acres? You are of 
a careless nature and too swift a life. So continuing your 
force of habit, you would shortly squander your possessions.” 

This counsel, that was as delicious viands to "the stomach 
of his sense,” goaded Amos Felton’s spirit. His mother’s in- 
formation provoked a spark which ignited a fresh flame of 
imagination in the oven of his brain, which was an accessory 
in baking envy toward his brother. He now wished his ab- 
sence permanent. 

Their conversation borrowed from the course of time an 
hour. The clock, like a tortoise, had plodded to the mark that 
registered the period of repose. 

Amos Felton was minus that pearl of price — a sister. His 
mother, therefore, smote the rock of divinity, from which 
trickled forth the streams of religion to soak his life’s Sahara ; 
a sparse group of oases dotted his desert soul, but one, like a 
Diogenes, would have needed a lantern to discover them. 

A sister is the purest treasure of a home, the dearest com- 
fort of a brother. In the family she is the jewel, in the house- 
hold a gem ; she is the diamond of love. She is the finish, the 
polish, the star of the family, and by her gentle influence, 
careful vigilance, loving kindness, and just criticism, con- 
demns vice, dissolves prejudice, undoes malice, stifles quarrels, 
and roots out slovenness. She promotes by her tenderness love, 
engenders by her gentleness happiness, enhances by her truth- 
fulness justice, and persuades by her resplendence virtue. Her 
countenance is heaven, her smiles sunshine, her voice psalm- 
ody ; her soul is the altar of religion ; her sympathy is as soft 
as dawn, as sweet as metheglin, as fragrant as a flower. She 


104 


is the angel reigning on the throne of home, meting out its 
light, its love, its joy, its life. 

Moreover, Mrs. Felton expended her total equity of love 
and hope on the purpose prepense of holding her son within 
the bounds of a proper life. She had balanced and weighed 
her husband in the scale of truth and right, so now with a 
sumptuous weight of years as artist of his locks, he was not 
found wanting in honesty, morality and religion. Yet in the 
midst of all her sorrow, Mrs. Felton exercised the use of her 
Bible — the vial containing the morphine of her soul — with re- 
newed fervor. She perused the Pentateuch, the Hexateuch, the 
Heptateuch, the Octateuch, and delighted in the Hagiography 
and the Pericope, — following the instructions of her precious 
book from Genesis to Revelation. 

Time progressed resolutely. The non-appearance of their 
son, Morris, brought no returning sunshine to the hearts of the 
unhappy parents. The little gleam was fast declining. The 
mother’s hosannas rose toward heaven as if each word was a 
soul, and the father’s genuflections received never a returning 
benefit. He was beginning to grow melancholy ; he spoke but 
little, his words seemed to inhabit his heart more than his 
tongue. He was not acclimated to his grief, and no recipe 
could he find to give him ease. He could not medicine the 
malady of grief, yet grief maladied his medicine of peace; he 
was unable to repair his famished heart. His grief drew his 
age upon his countenance, and through it all he tottered slowly 
on like a drunken man. Shakespeare would have fancied him 
another Lear. 


105 


CHAPTER XIIL 


A SORROWFUL DEPARTURE. 

Morris went forth on. The moon was directing his foot- 
steps, his heart his mind, his soul his sorrow, his hope his life. 
He was a traveling vessel filled with grief, diluted with a soli- 
tary drop of happiness. Within his bosom lie sheltered the 
magic key that alone could unhoard the treasure of love from 
Mary Ogden’s heart. This was the glittering drop — the hot 
hope that, nestled there — that amalgamated with his grief. 
Therefore, he had the comfort of knowing that he possessed 
the Open Sesame, which could reclaim at any time her love, 
the jewel that he ever craved; at least, her honor was so 
pledged. She would be the gentlest picture of his eye, the 
fairest painting of his thought, the sweetest flower of his 
bosom, the tenderest angel of his memory, and the portal of 
his soul would not be barred against her warm aflfection. 

This route which he paraded the previous Sunday, he was 
again traversing, but his mind, heart and soul, were now of 
a different affinity. Then he was soaring in ecstasy; now he 
was crawling in misery. He was a pedestrian furrowing his 
way through the blushing plain of night, with shady sorrow’s 
sable sails unfurled, and was leaving behind the genial cradle 
that nobly elevated his infant love. 

One consolation was as a sun in the winter of his mind. He 
knew that the same sun that pours his flood of sunlight upon 
Mary, would also mollify the frigidity of his sorrow ; that the 
same moon that steeps the night with light, would solace him 
as well as her ; that the same stars that glisten on the dome of 
heaven, would sprinkle him with their baptism of radiance, as 


io6 


well as his cherished love; that time will be as fleet of wing, 
or loitering in stride for him, as for his grander part. 

The vanity sky — the dial-plate of the heavens — was at a 
game of hide and seek with the plumy lakes of clouds, while 
Polaris, the star of stars, the gem of heaven, the target, the 
very centre of the starry kingdom, was the brilliant dial-tongue 
or gnomon, that governed myriad eyes, commanded many a 
benighted wanderer, vouchsafed for travelers, and reckoned 
direction for the multitude of mariners. Polaris is the 
philanthropist of night — the eyeshot of the universe. 

But this king of stars was not the cynosure for Morris. He 
was guided by another influence — an impetus within. The 
memory of his father’s stern rebuke was yet green and new. 
That reproof was the instigator of conspiracy among his 
heart’s ruddy drops. He crossed the bridge, the purling brook 
bounding onward, his attention directed for a moment to its 
tiny sound ; the requiems of the water were susceptible, the 
minstrelsy of the air hushed ; the reminder of death was stir- 
ring, the thought of life slumbering. Yet a light swarm of 
gallinippers, in premature season, with their thin drawn Or- 
pheus’ strains, were buzzing round his head, one insistently 
advertising itself upon his hand ; but with haste he disturbed 
its revery, effacing the placard, but the signature remained at- 
tached. The course winged June-bug sauntered by also with 
bass and drowsy sounds. 

He stopped. “This is where Mary and I almost five days 
since emerged from the wood,” he repeated in his mind. “O, 
happy spot! when shall we together walk the mossy bosom of 
this wood again?” 

Again he proceeded. Had one beheld him he would have 
noticed his insolid step. 

A woman loves in man a pleasant look, an honest tongue, 
and spilling hands that scatter deeds of kindness; a heart that 
emits pure love, feet that are nimble in actions of right, a 
witness that is true witness, and one that sows friendship 


107 


everywhere. As Morris Felton was such a likeness, even a 
slender image of the patient Nazarene, Mary devotedly loved 
him. He had informed her of his intent, which object being 
to wreak his Nemesis upon his father by retiring from the 
circle of his home. And there in the moon-swept back- 
ground towered his home a grotesque shadow. “I cannot 
originate a strife with the loved ones at home,” he murmured. 
“Our house cannot rise up against our house and live.” 

Arriving at the yard, he entered. All the muscles of hope, 
frantic of the future, were in action, mantled with the 
shadows of despair. Like a wolf to the fold, a fox to the 
roost, a lion to his prey, as a savage to the massacre ; in fact, 
like a thief in the night, he entered the threshold of his home, 
stole silently as a Macbeth through the house, though less am- 
bitious in his thirst to hatch his purpose, gained access to his 
room, as to Mary’s heart, and, minus ceremony, grasped his 
knapsack, previously arranged and prepared, and again was 
promptly in the kitchen below. He favored the clock with 
a final glance ; fifteen minutes had elapsed since the stroke of 
one. He removed from the shelf his convenient Bible — a 
touching present from his mother — opened it before the win- 
dow in the moonlight, and discovered a passage which he 
perused. In conclusion, he closed the holy volume, and stam- 
mered half aloud: “Will I likewise be considered such a 
prodigal?” A solitary tear stole from its lachrymal and rolled 
from his eye, the moist messenger of love and pity falling upon 
the volume. He deposited the Bible and the tear safely in his 
satchel and left the room. 

“This is my final egress from this house for a time, and God 
alone knows, perhaps, forever,” he silently thought. 

He followed the walk to the road. He had buckled on the 
girdle of departure ; he was about to forsake the landmark of 
his home ; he was amazed at his own grit. As he passed 
through the gate, he quietly closed it after him. In closing the 
gate it occurred to him as if he were precluding himself from 


io8 


the world, as if he were descending into the shadows of ob- 
scurity. He was standing outside the gate, his arms recumbent 
thereupon, and lavishing upon the mansion embarrassed ob- 
servation. 

‘'My joy was formerly enthroned in that domicile,” he mut- 
tered, his swimming eyes bleared with tears. “That house 
was the life of my happiness; now it is but the ghost of my 
happiness.” 

There, in the night, the sun looking upon the moon, the moon 
upon Morris, and Morris upon the house, he was cogitating 
on Mary, home, mother and friends. He was about to abdi- 
cate the circle of them all. Would they mourn for him dead? 
Would they designate him prodigal? Thus was he ponder- 
ing. Alas ! the sorrow stricken Mary was suspicious as to 
his intentions. 

Meanwhile, Morris’s channel of grief was full, as he gazed 
probably for the last time upon his father’s home — the cradle 
of his life — and upon his premises — the structure of his ma- 
turity. A rose bush blushing with a pavo of roses was visible 
before him, a pink rose affixed to a branch extending through 
the picket fence. He detached the rose, which he added to the 
contents of his valise as a remembrance of his home. 

He stepped into the road, his journey had begun. He was 
now dislinked from home. He proceeded onward, his yoke 
hard and his burden heavy. He had attained the extremest 
verge of his father’s estate, and was quitting the precincts of 
the Felton messuage; he was treading the road outside the 
purlieus of his home. Had one detected him, he would have 
been astounded at his fixed intent. He would have fancied him 
a somnambulist, and would have awakened him. The clutch 
of sorrow — that tarantula to the brain — had attacked him 
viciously, and announced itself in full. One might have 
imagined him a Hamlet, for his was a countenance painted in 
pain. He was pronely passing along, his eyes bent upon the 
ground. He did not perceive the hills flooded by the moonlight. 


109 


nor the bosom of heaven studded with diamonds. The downy 
clouds had disappeared, yet huger clouds suspended inces- 
santly over him. His happy love, his more unhappy grief, and 
the knowledge that every footstep was transporting him farther 
from that mountain of love, and submerging him deeper in the 
abyss of grief, were the dire conceptions that gathered upon 
him like the nocturnal dew itself. 

-This devout man had always spoke devout words, and his 
devout mind had always thought devout thoughts. He was now 
thinking with severity. He seemed to be smoothing his course 
with artful schemes. He was completely fettered with a thou- 
sand trials — gyves he could not rend. Yet the air contained 
some gleams of hope — hope of being securely restored again 
to Mary — restored until death would them separate. Hope, 
like love, is an elegant possession. Happily, these were 
Morris’s welcomest tenure. The image so .deeply imprinted 
on his soul, seemed to flicker before his mind’s windows, as 
Banquo’s ghost before the staring eyes of Macbeth. Only it 
out-Macbethed Macbeth’s vision in being a delightful vision ; 
it was Mary Ogden — the throned queen of his heart. 

Moonlight was his happy escort. ‘Tt is well that I am not 
recognized,” he ventured in his mind. He glanced upward. 
“Yes, I am safely detected.” Sorrow was a leaden weight 
upon his mind ; it was a rebel to his life ; it was a dirk to the 
cone where life is seated. 

In advance of him he discerned the creek, usually smooth 
as glass and silent as its twin color in the zenith, but now a 
raging stream of madness. At length he reached the bridge, 
at the same time raising his eyes into the smooth arch of night. 
Attaining the centre of the bridge, he set his knapsack down, 
leaned upon the parapet, and peered anxiously down at the 
turbulent waters of the reedy stream, on which surface was 
reflected a scintillating necklace of moonbeams. Night had 
absorbed from his trip about two hours, that is, about six 
miles ; there remained two miles to be yet traversed ; the hour 


no 


of four had disappeared. The smoke and spires of the city 
could be discerned. 

“I have left behind earth’s chiefest flower,” he soliloquized. 
“Never a flower bloomed so fresh before.” It seemed as if 
his pattering heart would cleave his sides, so fierce was the 
struggle of its strokes. 

In the waters beneath he perceived the brow of heaven, and 
the eyes of the universe mirrored there like clusters of dia- 
monds. Then his sight drifted upward for a clearer view 
of the real constellations. The smaller stars — infant children 
of the sky — were already cradled to sleep by mother morn, 
while the brighter heralds of the night were yet lingering on 
the fading dome. The burnished spots of heaven verily appear 
to be the windows which illuminate the mansions of the skies. 

And still the whirligig of passion was rotating in the storm 
of thought. He stood there bent in revery, stooped in trouble. 
When one is overpowered with such trouble we must “forgive 
them for they know not what they do.” 

At last he was awakened from his muse by a distant crow 
of Chanticleer, whose trumpet pervaded the silence of the 
early morning, answered by the shrill clarion of some neigh- 
boring companion, which startled the entire cordon of the 
roost. He glanced toward the site where breaks the day ; the 
shades of night were being melted into dawn. The moon was 
still visible. 

He set forth with rapid pace, impatient to arrive at the 
Pennsylvania House ere the morning stage departed west upon 
its tour. Night was his disguise, as he was not discovered 
in his pernoctation. He was proceding onward, yet he some- 
times fancied he was merely in a dream. Yet Mary was ever 
before his eyes. 

At last he gained the suburbs and was entering the city. 
The revolving wheel of night was fast approaching day; the 
incense breathing morn was stealing upon the earth ; the morn 
was hastening onward to woo the golden orb of day; the 


III 


crimson beams of light flashed along the fields of endless 
heaven’s vault ; and the entire orient soon shone in the morning 
sunshine. Morris turned, and looked toward the ruddy 
realms of the coming sun. He consulted his time-piece. It 
allowed him five and twenty minutes to attain his goal, the 
origin of his actual journey. 

He arrived at the hotel, where the omnibus stood in readi- 
ness, and where four draught horses were ready at command. 
At the expiration of half an hour the vehicle began to groan 
beneath its weight, while the roll of ponderous wheels aroused 
the silent morning. Five passengers occupied positions in the 
coach, one being Morris Felton, who was really forsaking his 
native soil, having left behind all save grief. Soon were they 
disgorged from the throat of the city, and were whirled 
a vast distance into the environments. They had fled the 
archipelago of houses, with their scores of narrow streets and 
shoals of people. Ascending the final hill permitted Morris 
to extenuate his farewell glance at his familiar town, where he 
perceived the cupolas and pinnacles dwindle into molehills, 
and the wilderness of spires and steeples vanish like masts be- 
neath the horizon of the deep. 

He was disconsolately sad, while he turned his wounded 
face to the window, as the tears ventured to intrude upon his 
wretchedness, and looked across the sorrowful ocean of earth, 
wavy with her thousand hills. 

He was deserting the confines of his vernacular city and 
country, its pleasant fields and bowery retreats, its smoky air 
and humming whirr of buzzing wheels; even the fountains 
etched with moss, the rills grotesque with flowers, the meads 
picturesque with sward, the brooks festooned with calamus, 
the homes tessellated with life, the groves florescent with 
color, and the farms and churches; from all was he divorced 
discouragingly. He was exempt from the haunts of his com- 
munity, and coercing his way to a foreign clime like a migrant 
bird. 


II2 


Hours rolled after hours. The omnibus rolled onward a§ 
progressive as the hours. Evening approached, and the fiery 
sphere of day was sloping toward the western hills, and 
gradually faded from sight. The melancholy shadows were 
crowning the brow of eve. Dewy night rolled out the noc- 
turnal wardens of the firmament, and another sad day had 
crept from its sorry life. 

Morris was journeying on terra-firma, yet he was swim- 
ming the sea of sorrow. Love was the compass of his journey, 
revenge the astrolabe of his voyage. The face of his heart 
was sorely wounded ; the blade of grief disfigures handsomely 
— a blade not homologous to one’s constitution. 

As onward rolled the wheels, so onward rolled the night. 
A rumbling stage-coach is not a provoker of sleep; so Morris 
was haunted by a sleepless night. Dawn approached, the 
hoary night grew ancient in the lap of morn, and the zephyrs 
of Aurora’s chamber aroused the passengers, drowsy with 
fatigue. 

By an occasional change of driver, coach and horses, they 
pursued their way assiduously; and with alternate travel and 
repose, Morris increased the distance between himself and 
home. Where hours rolled away, now rolled the days. One 
sennight had passed. He was following the serpentine track 
among the rugged mountains — home of cascades, cataracts, 
glaciers, avalanches, lakes, and rivers’ sources, — their flanks 
and terraced slopes ascending towards the sky, where antique 
crests and antiquated summits, cintured with tapering pines, 
and girdled with various other trees, shrouded with mossy 
bark and surpliced in slender robes of verdure, soared into the 
hoods of mists suspending over them. 

Spurred hither by the sword of love, Morris was climbing 
the mountains of earth — those warts of stone, — why could he 
not also scale the mounds of sorrow — those tumors of passion ? 
Schooled through Mary Ogden’s love, and hindered by his 
father, we perceive him pursue this process, unwilling to of- 


fend his father. Behind him lay the solution of the past — the 
solution of love, — before him the riddle of the future — the 
riddle of life. 

Man — dwarfed copy of God — is too frail a specimen of his 
Creator to bar the stride of time, the latter part of July having 
arrived, and Morris Felton had attained, as he purposed, the 
termination of his journey. He was in the plain of strangers, 
and consented to pitch his tent of endurance, and sojourn in 
that alien land, with a promise of the future. The locality 
where he tarried was in the neighborhood of trie, of his own 
State. He was a branch severed from the parental 
tree, and wafted from his stronghold by the tornado of retri- 
bution. His pygmy ship of hope was left to battle with the 
tossing waves of life. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


A SPRING NIGHT OF MID-SUMMER GRIEF. 

Mary was alone. She was in the night of grief, as well as 
in the night of nature. Her glance poetic as the stars, and her 
smiles artistic as the rose, were transformed into a stage of 
seriousness. When she raised her head, Morris had faded 
from view. Her cheeks, previously so drenched with tears, 
were now parched and burning — her eyes destitute of the 
liquid emblems of internal anguish. Her watery sorrow had 
congealed. Tears are the language of love or grief or pity. 

There she stood beneath the great, cold heaven’s grove of 
stars, and the pallid moon, her eyes again presented to the 
ground, her breast flooded with fire, while around her the 
flowers were effusing their sweet aroma. An icy shiver 
searched her sinews ; it was as a furnace of cold in the interior 
of the tropics. She directed her eyes upward at the spangled 
top of heaven, where the frigate moon was sailing. She re- 
mained standing in the night among the murmuring waves of 
noise, and the tiny storms of sound, with her groaning heart 
smoking with sorrow, and her swimming soul reeking with 
grief. 

“Morris has departed and left me in a world of darkness,” 
she fondled carelessly in her mind. 

She pursued Morris with her attachment as the sunflower 
follows the sun ; now he would escape her as the summer the 
mountain’s top. Her life had been a stranger to s )rrow ; in 
fact, she was a virgin of sorrow, until by this uncouth event, 
the heaven of her existence became at once as violet as anger, 
as blue as her greater heaven. 


“What now does shadow me?’’ she inquired of herself. 
“Where am I and why am I here? What strangeness haunts 
me so? I fancied Morris here! Really, I recollect! he has 
forsaken me.” 

As one from a dream she awoke. Her situation was obvious, 
for she recognized the gorge into which she was precipitated. 
Her face was hot and sultry, her cheeks feverish, yet she was 
chilled exceedingly; the midnight air was cool. She turned 
her back upon the moon and night, and walked sorrowfully 
toward the house. She thought to eliminate the mask of 
night, and in a quandary of mind succeeded in discovering her 
apartment. The cutting tooth of remorse was gnawing 
piteously in her bosom, and with a pain and gesture indicative 
of affliction, she flung herself upon her bed, buried her face 
deeply in the pillows, and contributed bountifully of those 
tears provoked by sorrow’s troublesome caress. 

There she lay, the virtuous pillows veiling her face, the 
streams of distress issuing from her eyes, and her whole frame 
grievously weakened. She was a perfect pattern of anguish. 
Her breast was hotly besieged with care, and muxy rivers of 
sorrow meandered through her brain, even as the tingl‘*^g cur- 
rents of blood through her heart. Her soul was battling with 
a navy of woe, as it withstood the surges of distress. 

Turning slowly over on her bed, she exposed a face broken 
with weeping, the beauty of her cheeks stained with salty 
drops. It was impossible for her to long restrain, in one posi- 
tion, her disturbed physique, so she rose from her bed, seated 
herself before the window, and looked westwardly out across 
the night, seeing nothing, her eyes tethered to her thoughts. 
She did not see the silent moon gliding through the starry 
meadow of the universe, the trees contoured against the sky, 
nor the shadows on the earth outlining apparitions. She did 
not hear the chirp of the mournful-colored cricket, the sym- 
phonies of the fiddling katydid, nor the peevish cry of the 
whip-poor-will. 


no 


“Why has he flown?” she unraveled from her skein of 
thoughts. “He was like nepenthe to my heart.” 

She was boldly caressed by savage sorrow while he thrust 
the thorns of distress every moment deeper in her bosom. 

“O, why did he so forcibly divide himself from me?” she 
would have inquired, had a friend been present to drink her 
speech. “His words, like flakes of gold, fell from his tongue, 
and his smiles, like beams of sunshine, gleamed from his eyes. 
He was the ruler of my thoughts, the king of my joy, the chief 
of all my actions.” 

But as she was not favored with the privilege to lay her 
mind open to an associate, she sunk herself into the silent sea 
of meditation. Truly, hers was a grief that was a grief ; it was 
gilded with the tinge of love ; it was laden with the weight of 
pity. It hung a pall upon her as dark as night. As if this were 
not sufficient taxing of her strength, she was yet tormented 
with cephalalgia. Her nomadic mind could procure no shelter 
or repose, so rising from her chair, and with eyes to the floor, 
she began to pace the room. 

“This incident magnifies my love to its actual dimensions,” 
she pondered. “Morris was a marvel in the lyceum of my com- 
pany for the language of my love. His presence is the only 
prescription by which my sick heart can turn to convalescence. 
I have drunk the spirits of joy, now I eat the food of sadness. 
How long, O, how long will it continue !” 

Being present, Morris would have been her day in this sad 
night. 

The thought of her mother rose in her mind ; she would not 
annoy her ; her footsteps fell lightly. Her room w^as densely 
imbued with light, transmitted from the moon, which had al- 
ready passed the middle heaven, and suffused gorgeous robes 
of radiance upon the floor and wall. Two struck from the 
clock. Mary had not heard. Attaining a position the moon 
fell athwart her countenance, when she assumed a graceful 
attitude, her trembling finger courting her trembling lip, her 


breathing company to her thumping heart, and stared on the 
silver queen of heaven. Graceful Luna appeared to bestow 
upon her an ironical smile. She gazed long, bathed in the mel- 
low moonlight, her semblance as picturesque as a mantled 
statue. Had one observed her thus, one would have pitied 
her — would have wept for her. 

Again she seated herself by the window, encumbered with 
a load of cares, a hundred and a score of trials. Her heart 
was glowing as a sun and as unquenchable. After a lapse of 
half an hour, Mary Ogden was marvellously altered; she was 
as pale as snow. Where a fever was previously imminent, 
legible from her crimson features, her face was now blanched 
— as white as' marble. She felt as chilled as a premature 
swallow in spring, or a belated thrush in autumn. She was 
fondled like a child in misery’s cold and cheerless arms. She 
reflected as severe as trouble troubled her. 

The clock recorded the hour with a doleful tongue, the 
gloomy stroke of three permeating the house. She was not 
provoked with sleep — the liniment of life’s caress. Ideas in 
a stormy tumult sifted through her mind. She silently solilo- 
quized : 

'‘I now resemble a vessel shipwrecked on the shoals of sor- 
row, and cast ashore on the sea of life. Now I can live a 
living death, burst my breast with sighs, my head with aches. 
I am a slave of woe, shaken by worry as a reed by the wind. 
My heart is nearly stifled with the asthma of agitation. Why 
could Morris not invent a project to vanquish such a difficulty. 
After all, this world is but a cave of sorrow, life an uncertain 
cloud, seeing that darkness is upon my head, and blackest 
night veiling my soul. Daylight may dawn again upon me, 
but my soul is dim, dark, dead, until Morris — brightest sun 
of all — shall baptize me with the radiance of his countenance. 
His love was the grandest pleasure of my life, his presence 
administered heaven to my soul ; his absence leaves a vacuum 
in my bosom, in my memory an injury, in my life an orifice. 


ii8 


My eyes will bring blindness upon themselves with weeping 
and with waking, and will not perceive a jocund sun stream 
through the curtains of Aurora’s chamber with so fresh a 
radiance as in the cheerful past, until it shines upon my lover, 
Morris, and myself embraced. Alone I cannot liberate myself 
from this atrocious grief; it requires another — the mechanic 
of my joy — to undo the shackles and emancipate me from this 
monster. I wonder Morris cannot feel my sorrow, it is so 
painful, or hear my grief, it is so loud. Morris was my fondest 
treasure, my eye’s delight; I gave him undivided love. I will 
with tears and prayers weave a cord of trust that will seduce 
him back in haste to devour my torrid passion for his com- 
pany. This break levies its infliction on my life with vigor; 
it is my heart’s assassin, my soul’s Macbeth; it murders not 
my sleep only but my life. It is a tension to my mind, a simoon 
to my nerves. I had but a solitary love, he has departed ; one 
idol, he has vanished; a single angel, he has escaped. He 
purposes to be an exile from home, but is a greater from him- 
self, the greatest from me. Morris’s will accomplished will 
render havoc to himself as well as home and me. The happi- 
ness that flowed lucid in my bosom is now intermingled with 
a tameless passion.” 

She was fondling her locket, — her new-born child of re- 
membrance — the memento of her lover, and romantically re- 
moved it from its chaste and envious lodging. 

A second time she rose from her chair with a swiftness in 
proportion as her sorrow was oppressive, and striding to the 
bureau secreted the locket in a drawer, where it was queen 
amongst her sundry trinkets. Then she advanced towards 
her bed and thereupon did fling herself undressed. Her ex- 
ternal sorrow was distinctly palpable, yet her internal sorrow 
outweighed her outward sorrow thrice; it touched the very 
centre of her heart, the core of her soul. Her sorrow was a 
sample of the purest, a specimen of the sternest, an example 
of the darkest. 


As the time approached morning, the atmosphere grew 
colder. Mary submerged herself beneath the placid sea of 
covers. She was prepared for the embrace of sleep, but gentle 
sleep grappled not with her. Her sweet happiness was so sour 
soured that it held repose from her dewy eyes, and prevented 
the nocturnal nurse from fixing silence on those lamentable 
lids. Frenzy was her friend, but she was not a friend of 
frenzy. The miaul of the grimalkin or the hound baying 
deep-mouthed was unnoticed by her. 

Lying upon a restive pillow, her tolling heart beating audi- 
bly, her blanched face anxious and perturbed, her eyes suffer- 
ing from bewailment, and her aching head expressing flagrant 
torture, Mary Ogden’s mind was on an exploration of the 
future. Her toiling mind figured that Morris’s expedition led, 
perhaps, to death. Thus by assessing the events of the past, 
and steeping them in the chaldron of the present, she was 
capable to penetrate the future. She perceived the shadows 
of a midnight life in advance of her, dingy, murky, odious, 
with its abysses of despair, its caverns of anguish, its chasms 
of anxiety, its gaps of persecution, and its vales and canons of 
threatening gloom. 

The clock struck four; time had not yet announced sleep, 
nor eased wakefulness. The nurturing power of a little sleep, 
rest, light, life, did not favor her with complaisance. Woe and 
torment covered her with a mantle of lassitude. She was de- 
veloping into a state of languor — torpified by sorrow. Yet 
half an hour more had faded into worry’s time, and Mary 
Ogden had subjugated sleeplessness; she was gyved in slum- 
ber’s chain; she was exploring the tranquil land of flowery 
dreams ; or, perchance, the convulsed region of thorny visions. 

Morning stole away the darkness of the night. It was 
broad morning when Mary awoke. Her brief sleep had been 
full and rounded. Her mouth opened with her eyes, and she 
spoke aloud, saying : ‘‘O, kind and glorious day, how wel- 
come !” 


120 


As she doffed the gown of slumber, she instantly reclined 
into the shades of dullest stupor. Her optics were not dim- 
med with tears, dry sorrow incompetent to supply those optic 
orbs with the wet couriers of despair. Tears were exhausted, 
she having wept her moist eyes dry, and her damaged heart 
sore. 

She arose, stationed herself before the window in a chair, 
and looked in the direction towards Morris Felton’s home. 
Her eye roved carelessly over the sun-kissed hills, tortured 
with quincunxs of cattle; the branching monuments of the 
woods, with rotund and peaky tops ; the flowers, made fragrant 
by the dew of morn ; the suave plateau of heaven with its ex- 
tirpated stars, and demising moon famishing before the sun- 
shine of the infant day; and the jubilant equestrian whistling 
to the earless air; but the retina of her eyes collected none of 
the panorama. Only one image was before her; this was 
Morris Felton. He was the picture of her mind, the study 
of her heart, the diet of her soul. 

Where was he now ? That designer of her sweetest passion 
— her assuaging heart-piece — who a few hours previous had 
breathed the climate of his conversation upon her ; whose 
arm engirdled her, and dispatched the senses of emotion ting- 
ling through her nerves ; whose cheeks were so invitingly 
pressed against her own ; and whose lips, that, meeting ruby 
lips, wooed with infinite rapture, through so thick a sorrow ; 
he was venturing to an unknown locality. 

She proposed to conceal her misery as well as to endure it. 
She was averted somewhat from herself by her mother’s re- 
veille from the kitchen, and a few moments subsequently was 
descending the stairs, when, attaining the kitchen, she unfolded 
before her mother her forlorn appearance. 


I2I 


CHAPTER XV. 


GRIEF THE JAILER OF A HEART. 

“Why^ Mary, what clouds hang upon your countenance? 
inquired Mrs. Ogden, on perceiving her daughter’s wretched- 
ness. “Your features are strangely marred and your cheeks 
and brow so pale. What has so wrought your injury of 
spirit ?” 

The mother, on recognizing Mary, was wild with astonish- 
ment. Such a woe-begone expression had Mary never re- 
vealed prior to this occasion. 

“I was a prey to wakefulness,” she returned nervously. 
“The sorry time stole the ballads of my slumber, and inserted 
vilest torture to my mind.” 

“Some cause is father to this, Mary ; I say some motive has 
been born to enfeeble you, and it were but faultless to debate 
the cause with me.” 

It was Mary’s purpose to disguise her defeat for a time, but 
her countenance was a reflection of her feelings, a spy that 
traduced her sorry plight. Her love was not only a warm 
love, it was a savage love ; her grief was a glass picturing to 
her the wildness of that love. 

“Mother,” she began, seating herself by the window, “that 
which has transpired yesternight will mark a shadow in my 
future reckoning, and blot the cheeriest portion of my days.” 

“Yes, my daughter, something has divested you of peace, 
discerped your color, and robbed you of your sleep. Morris 
did not show opposing favor to you ! Speak, Mary, and give 
me answer !” 

Mary’s replication was not prompt. A stream of punish- 


122 


merit, beneath a cuirass of grief, was coursing through her 
bosom, and a rill of anguish, bridged with a helmet of sorrow, 
threaded the ravines of her mind. She was incapable to 
show a merry cheer, and delayed answer to her mother. 

“Why do you defer to detail your sundered comfort, or fail 
to construe to me the occasion that has stained the physiology 
of your joy?” her mother continued. 

Her grief challenged her into the arena of explanation. 

“Morris has embarked from home,” she replied. “He is 
not present more to ignite occasionally the tinder of my happi- 
ness. And without the sunshine of his favor, my anxiety will 
offer no surcease, but continue to freeze up my warmth of 
life.” 

She turned her face for the intention of hiding her eyes, 
which were forfeiting numerous tears. 

“Is it thus you speak ? What has now occurred to sap away 
the even tenor of his life?” Mary looked in silence from the 
window. After a brief silence, she responded to her mother’s 
inquiry. 

“Mother, you recollect that Morris’s heart sit contented in 
my company! He informed me I was the sunshine of his 
love, and without me the air of punishment would frost his 
heart. The very utterance of so warm a thought conjointly 
with so cold a deed almost burns my heart and freezes my 
speech.” 

She paused; the humor of her sorrow demanded it; the 
azure welkins of her eyes were rainy with weeping. Shortly 
she continued : 

“His father, not purchasing favor from me, and not de- 
sirous of a close relation with me, has called Morris up in 
stern reproval. If he did not cease to bask in my society he 
would intercept his future by withholding his inheritance. 
The weeping waters of my heart, and the tears of my soul’s 
sad sorrow, fall with compassion as tribute for Morris. With 
him, as with myself, grief and misery are his unwelcome con- 


123 


nate twins. By the best course he resolves to meet his father’s 
mandate, and that by unlinking himself from home for a 
season. Because he cannot divorce my love, nor disobey his 
father’s doctrine, he has followed this course. And thus from 
me he is dead for a time — perhaps forever.” 

They partook of their repast, in which Mary was abstemious. 
Grief is a thief to the appetite. 

Mrs. Ogden, also, was unhappied over this adventure. She 
was sorely grieved over this tangling of atfairs, and thoughts 
rose like phantoms in her brain. That her daughter — a fair 
gem of Providence — should have her happiness escape like a 
butterfly from its chrysalis was a thorough shock to her. 

The day wore on without a vicissitude in Mary’s condition. 
She supported her modern burden feebly. It was not only a 
cloud, it was an eclipse — nigh a total darkness. Evening ap- 
proached apace. The first sad day was disappearing linger- 
ingly. Mary passed the threshold of her home, and walked 
gropingly — a step not given to her habit. She was perceived 
by her mother. 

“Have you decided to venture forth this evening?” she 
asked. 

“Yes ! a walk is sweet necessity,” replied Mary. 

“Limit the distance of your stroll, and do not linger long.” 

Mary made no rejoinder, but entered on her jaunt. She 
followed the road as far as the little bridge, which was nigh 
the locality where Morris and herself issued from the wood 
the preceding Sabbath. She noted the spot, and her thoughts 
did harbor there. She imagined herself shut out from the 
cheerful world, or, more properly speaking, shut in. Retracing 
her steps, she returned home, entered the yard, stood motion- 
less before the gate, and, supporting herself upon it, gazed 
aloft. 

“Mary, do not tarry out of doors to-night; the atmosphere 
draws dampness! It were best you seek your bed early and 
endeavor to find repose,” her mother called from the kitchen. 


124 


She stood motionless, chained by revery. Grief was affixed 
in her heart like an amphibian in the earth, or a batrachian in 
a rock. It nearly checked the current of her veins. Finally, 
she entered the house. 

Days followed days, and weeks weeks pursued. One day 
resembled another, as a rose a rose, a bee a bee, or a cygnet 
its swan. Mary’s sorrow of each succeeding day was also as 
like to the other as a drop of water is to water, or a star to a 
star. The Aetna of her heart would not discontinue its erup- 
tion, nor would the geyser of her soul cease its eructation. In- 
formation would frequently steal to her from the Felton home 
— information sad as havoc, blear as winter. The opportunity 
once afforded, during the summer, to consult Amos Felton, 
but he possessed no inkling of his brother. Henceforward, 
Mary received no intelligence pertaining to the Feltons for a 
period of two months, when she resolved to expedite a visit 
and employ Morris’s father in conversation. Her heart was 
with Morris, because he was her treasure ; her mind also was 
located there. As sorrow raped her virtuous heart, Morris 
would have been a doctor to assist in the parturition of her 
child of happiness. To sorrow she was not so good a mother 
as to nurse so vile a sorrow. 

Her mother, seeing her attired for a journey, intercepted her, 
but Mary did not speak ; her heart did not contain words, its 
project was deeds. Her mission completed, she adjourned 
seriously wounded from Mr. Felton’s presence, and wended 
her way sorrowfully homeward. Yet she had mellowed the 
aged man’s heart, but did not know it. Her tearful, gentle 
presence would have converted a sharded heart to sponginess, 
or corroded to dust of pity an iron organ. 

But her hope was crushed; a wilderness of darkness lie in 
her future — a goal black, vague, frightful as life, terrible as 
death, and from which rose gyres of night smoky as the 
crooked breath of Pluto. Smiles did not conduct their revel- 
ries on her cheeks more, sorrow having pilfered them. She 


125 


could not medicine her sorrows with a single song. She no 
longer henceforth thought to hear the lark’s dawning carol, 
the robin’s morning matin, the day-bird’s lively ditty, the 
thrush’s evening chant, the swallow’s twilight lullaby, the 
night-bird’s piping cry; the doleful note of the owl was all 
she hoped to recognize. 

All the way home her eyes were as precipitating as clouds, 
with a tempest raging in her breast, her heart a broken glebe 
of woe, her soul a wreck. Her eyes saw not, her mind ob- 
served ; her meditation was centered on Morris. She was 
weaving in her thoughts : “Oh, that he were present to deliver 
me from my bondage, free me from my captivity, and conduct 
me through this darkness with the light of his countenance ; 
that my eyes could see him and my ear hear him.” Being 
present, he was the Morpheus of her thought, the medicine 
of her contentment; her body’s hygiene, her life’s physician. 
Absent, he was her misery. 

Arriving at home, she sauntered, rather than walked, through 
the room, and ascended the stairs, regardless of her mother’s 
exhortation. The answer of her acquired education was 
painted on every lineament of her countenance and every 
movement of her being from top to toe. She fell into the em- 
brace of her bed — fond nurse of weariness — but was not lulled 
to ease. 

“Morris is no more,” Mary informed her mother later. 

“Do you bring such ill news? Did you collect these sick 
tidings ?” she sorrowed. 

“To me he is lost, yet he may live,” followed Mary. “No 
trail of knowing can be had as to his whereabouts.’’ This 
serious solemn account upset Mrs. Ogden’s equilibrium. She 
paled slightly and her bosom throbbed. Mary, after a semi- 
recovery of herself, unraveled her entire cocoon of tidings to 
her mother. 

Her injury continued incessantly, and on no occasion since 
its prologue, was it coerced upon her with such vigor as on 


126 


the evening of her visit. Her memory clung to her pristine 
lover. Sorrow proved her remembrance of him fresh; he yet 
lived in her eyes, her heart, her mind ; the print of his remem- 
brance was not erased. She wore grief’s garland as a token 
of his love. He had been the sunshine of spring, which 
brought to her the perfume of joy. Now he was but the mist 
of thought, the winter of calamity. Nevertheless, her heart 
— the candle of her bosom — was incandescent still, the fire of 
love increasing, the tempest of grief augmenting also. The 
calescence of that heart did not benefit Morris, for it was as a 
light hid under a bushel. Life to her seemed empty since his 
absence, and his absence made vacant life to him. In fact, 
Morris and Mary were the unhappy couple in the wide theatre 
of life. 

Mary retired ere the hour rose high, grief aiding her re- 
tirement. Grief is one of love’s messengers, one of his inter- 
preters. An assuaging pillow refused to dull the edge of wake- 
fulness, which gave her privilege to traverse the spacious plain 
of heaven with her glance, where she encountered the radiant 
stars — wakeful as herself. “Why does not sleep visit these 
wakeful lids of mine, and physician me to the health of 
slumber?” she meditated. Sleep would not fill the vacuums of 
her eves. Undoubtedly, God’s angels attempte'd to pluck the 
dewdrops from those gazeful eyes, and essayed in vain to 
fold her stubborn lids in slumber, but Morris alone could have 
kissed those eyelids still. Her eyes finally closed, however, 
the balm of rest weighing upon those gems of vision. 

And thus time passed on. A lengthened cycle had inter- 
vened. White, cold, austere winter was crowned king of 
earth. More than a twelvemonth had disappeared since Mary’s 
visit to the Felton place. 

On a brilliant, glacial, serene January evening, Mary and 
her mother were sitting close to the hearth, and were intimate 
.with the ruddy glow of the fire’s fickle flood of flame. Silence 


127 


had softly settled down upon the room. Mary was the first to 
invade the stillness. 

“If cousin Jane desires to friendship us a visit during the 
present winter, it were well she introduce herself ere long. 
What space of time has intervened since we had her latest 
letter ?” 

“About five weeks,” Mrs. Ogden answered. “But she may 
have changed her plans.” 

Rising, Mary walked to the window, drew aside the cur- 
tain, and glanced without. The snowy screen of earth 
sparkled iridescent beneath the silver moon. She returned to 
her chair and resumed her former silent discourse with her- 
self. The clock struck, the hour was seven. ^ As the clock 
ceased, another sound was distinctly heard ; it was a gentle 
rap upon the door. Before Mary recovered, her mother un- 
barred the door, and someone entered, who was none else 
but Mary’s cousin, Jane Ogden, from the Quaker City, on her 
predestined visit. She had arrived in the stage-sleigh, and 
completed her journey by walking a mile, while the stage 
progressed on its course. 

A volley of news from the items of their memories, were ex- 
changed as an introductory engagement. The conversation 
continued briskly, Mary assisting in the newsy battle, with 
such vigor as she was competent to borrow conversation from 
her dejection. The evening was passed pleasantly, and the 
following day was enjoyed as nature gave enjoyment to our 
trio. 

Two days posterior to this evening, Mrs. Ogden trudged to 
the village. Mary and her cousin were alone. 

Jane Ogden, like Mary, was a blonde, though not as hand- 
some as Mary. With long silken hair, light blue eyes, medium 
height and weight, easy disposition, scrupulously neat, and 
bland and genial, the glimmer of twenty-seven years in her 
eyes, she was yet unmarried. 


128 


Their conversation ‘drifted up the following, Jane advanc- 
ing: 

“Did you mention that Morris — his surname !” 

“Morris Felton!’' responded Mary. 

“Did you inform me yesterday, that he intended to con- 
ciliate himself with home, after a brief jaunt in the wilderness 
of strangers?” 

“Yes 1 and he should have been long §ince present to give 
me cheer,” Mary replied feelingly. 

“Love, like leaf and flower, youth and beauty, often fades,” 
remarked Jane. “One does not know but what your lover’s 
eyes have found and won, or treasures another dearer now to 
him than you yourself have been. Lovers often are so de- 
ceptive. Experience is my teacher.” 

“I can give no credence to such imagination. He declared 
positively that, by the image of his love, he had knowledge of 
mine. I hold a gift of his — a golden shackle of his promise — 
which I will show.” 

Mary excused herself from the room for a moment, and re- 
turned directly, having in her hand the golden locket presented 
her by Morris. Jane examined the locket and explored it at- 
tentively.^ 

“On the presentation of this, his love was wide as space, 
grand as glory, good as air, golden as this gold itself, for his 
heart went with it,” she interpreted. “It is solid gold, it is 
expensive, it is pure, it is valuable as you value love. What is 
within ?” . 

“Naught to my knowledge,” returned Mary. “I have di- 
rected several attempts of exploit to bring to light any message 
it may contain, but it is a straight piece of goods, or, I might 
term it, a piece of goods in a straight piece.” 

“It can be opened and relieved of whatever secrets it may 
deliver,” saw Jane. 

So after some consideration, a miniature pen-knife was pro- 
cured, when Jane proceeded to dislocate the fastening of the 


5 


129 


locket. With a delicate application of the knife, and after a 
brief endeavor, the locket’s force was expended. The interior 
divulged a slip of carefully folded paper. Mary, receiving the 
paper, and inspecting it, exclaimed after examination : 

“A billet doiix! A written piece of Morris’s mind! A 
script expounder of his fate !” 

She read, and this is what she read . 

“My dearest Mary : 

“It pains me deeply that my love and I must separate for a 
time, but ’tis an act must bring its own reward. I hope it 
will not darken your bright joy, although I for a while do set 
my feet in the sandals of travel whilst departing for parts un- 
known. Neither if you have lately caught up troubles, do I 
aim to add troubles to your already troubled soul. This is 
the lone method by which I can hope to rid me of a load that 
would an Atlas crush. 

“Beneath the thumb of father’s stubbornness it is impossible 
for me to longer bide, but necessity prompts my absence until 
he beholds there is no truer and fitter woman to join me in a 
life of wedlock. I desire you, Mary, to cherish and remember 
this : I never felt what love was till I knew Mary Ogden ; I 
never knew what a woman was till I met Mary. Therefore, 
my move may be a Siberia to me, but only through this Siberia 
can I hope to attain my rights. 

“I am aware I cannot live by bread alone, but I require my 
Mary’s trust to buoy me up, without which all will be but a 
reminder of my better da,ys. Thus, as I look over the retro- 
spect of my life, and then to gauge the future, I dread visions 
like those shadows which come stalking down the long cor- 
ridors of time. 

“Yea, a Solomon’s lily may Mary have transformed into, 
but still a lily I must look forward to gather in on my return. 
And even if my absence brings my dear one hurt, yet I do not 
expect her to turn timid as Shelly’s Sensitive Plant any more 
than I shall be as brave as Richard of the Lion Heart. Yes, 


Mary, you, who are the ditto of an angel, shall, at my return, 
find me ready to mete out to you the richest libations of my 
love — the very manna of my bosom. I must look to love and 
hope — the two eyes of life — to guide me safely through this 
ordeal. 

♦ “Most certainly I will be led by lonely contemplation, see- 
ing how my heart doth dance attendance to my love. Also, 
bright Elysium will be but gloomy Tartarus till once again I 
have returned to greet my Mary in tenderest embrace, for, as 
I repeat, I, Morris, am a steadfast Morris, loving my sweet- 
heart better than a bee loves honey. But I also take her at her 
word and will look forward to meet her faultless, as one fault 
is a drop of iodine in the water of virtue. 

“So, to meet a linked and happy future we must maintain a 
faith weather cannot soil nor time erase. ’Tis hard when one 
must stagger beneath the dynamo of sore affliction ; yet my 
heart is all the warmer even if from my life Alaska has chased 
out Florida. 

“I have now but to add adieu, feeling that my dear Mary 
will await my return, and until I have straightened out the 
crookedness of this revolt. 

“This is truly Mary’s, from her true Morris.” 

Mary perused this letter vividly. 

“This completes the evidence of his fidelity and love,” she 
declared. 

Her companion glanced at her inquiringly : “Does it con- 
tain ought that should hinder me from scanning it?” 

She recognized tears in Mary’s eyes, as she deftly extended 
her hand to receive the transcript, Mary nodding approval. 
She devoured the letter to the end. 

“This is here pronounced by an enlightened pen,” she ob- 
served. 

“Yes,” replied Mary, “he read much, and once was sandaled 
as a teacher. This fresh voice— in this he speaks — adds fuel 
to my agitation, and this grief is rapidly exhausting my 
strength ” 

131 


Like ice before the fire, manna beneath the sun, fog against 
the wind, or night pursued by day ; so Mary, consumed by 
grief, was pining gradually away, burned by this obscure flame. 
She was unable to pluck from her bosom, those stings that in- 
fused their venom. No physicist could remedy her sorrow, no 
bathymetry in knowledge could fathom her anxiety, no te4e- 
scope could cipher her meteoric heart. The fuel of love had 
heated hot her heart, but Morris was not benefited more there- 
by ; dry sorrow now enveloped her tropic heart. She possessed 
no shield to withstand the angry blades of sorrow. Could she 
have soared on high, melted into thin air, and dwelt among 
the constellations of peace, her contentment would have been 
established. 

“Perhaps he lives no longer,’' Jane advanced. 

“I cannot imagine such an incidence,” she replied, “yet his 
absence sorely woimds me. If the winds could waft my words 
to inundate his ears, I would pour the air full.” 

“It is too true, Mary, that you are much hurt with sorrow, 
and no sunshine from heaven can clear your trouble-clouded 
countenance, which is a book where obvious sorrow can be 
read. One can easily notice it has sorely gored your bosom, 
and that this stale world is but a blank to you without your 
Morris. If he does not put in his appearance soon, you will 
prematurely perish. Grief is a prolonged suicide. Many are 
the firm, staunch hearts that are wrecked on the sea of love 
by storms of sorrow.” 

“True, the journey of my heart in life is perilous, its injury 
serious ; the wound seems incurable, and out-surgeons the sur- 
geon. Had I the pinions of an eagle I would seek out Morris, 
had I the earth to soar around. Or did I possess the wings of 
a dove, I would ascend the heavens and efface myself from the 
world. Then, perhaps, I could repose in quietude.” 

When Mrs. Ogden returned from the village the conversa- 
tion was abruptly concluded. 

Two weeks having passed, Jane’s sojourn was terminated. 


132 


She started homeward, having expressed congratulations of 
her visit. 

The chaise of time continued ; two years had elapsed since 
Jane Ogden’s visit. Mary’s grief flowed in a steady stream 
incessantly, and was of vast longevity. The color had left her 
cheeks, her flesh was consuming, her life was receding. Her 
pallid, wasted countenance, her departed strength, her feeble 
heart exemplified that her life was searching for the end. 
Like the oak to the woodman’s axe, or the willow to the storm, 
so she was yielding to her grief. Trouble is like an eddy in 
the rivulet ; grief is like a whirlpool in the river ; distraction 
is like a maelstrom in the ocean ; Mary had almost reached 
the ocean of her voyage. She was simply a child of time, her 
cheeks void of the botany of health. She wore two flowers 
in her bosom, one of love and one of sorrow, promulgated 
by him who had been the staflf of her peace and the prop of her 
joy. Morris present, was the Raphael of her countenance, the 
Pygmalion of her soul, the Romeo of her happiness, the Or- 
pheus of her heart, the Adonis of her thoughts, the Cupid of 
her love, the Aladdin of her hope, the Christ of her peace, the 
Creator of her designs. He had been her Apollo, her earthly 
Lord. Yet he was not in her company, therefore, sorrow was 
her heart’s cupping-glass. The cold of discontent had blanched 
her countenance, and culled the roses from her cheeks. Love 
to a woman is as dew to a flower ; it sweetens and enlivens 
her. Love made Mary Ogden strong, yet grief made her weak. 
Her anxiety protracted a short December’s day in a solstitial 
summer’s day. 

The time had now arrived at that period where March de- 
prives brief February of his reign. 


133 


CHAPTER XVI. 


GUIDED BY REVENGE. 

An August sun shone upon a traveler walking on a road 
somewhere about two score miles southeast of Erie. This man 
was a stranger. He carried in his hand a portmanteau, and his 
condition was such that passers by recognized him. He al- 
lured no one in dialogue, but pursued his direction as if 
familiar with his journey. This man was a hero, some father’s 
son, some mother’s pride, some brother’s companion, some 
maiden’s lover ; it was Morris Felton, riding on the wings of 
vengeance, and was now in the Tundras of strangers. He was 
a fugitive from home, on an excursion of revenge, to which he 
was a myrmidon. 

The sun was inclining toward the horizon as he entered a 
cozy little villa, where he contemplated an asylum for repose, 
and to deaden his fatigue. Physical weariness is a mendicant 
for sleep. 

The day following, he continued his journey. The cum- 
brous sun was swimming through the heavens like a globe ; 
the heat was immense, yet Morris’s breast contained a greater. 
A frightful whirling, like a cyclone of flame, raved within him ; 
a hurricane of despair was charging through his brain. He 
imagined life without Mary’s consolation, to be like the moon- 
less night or hymnless groves. He was as melancholy as 
Cape Horn. Mary Ogden was continually before his eyes as 
a phantascope. He was an Atlas to sustain a weight of such 
gigantic mold — such a world of sorrow. Grief hibernated in 
his soul. He was a Colossus ; his feet here, his mind at home. 
The fog of dilemma which he had entered, almost blinded his 


134 


mind, and succored for a total wreck, the residue of his con- 
tentment. He was a wayfarer roving in the world ; nor was he 
journeying in pomp, but wandering in shame. 

Several yeomen passed him by. Next a man, riding, ap- 
proached, who appeared a resident of the vicinity; he was 
saluted by Morris. 

“Can labor be acquired in this locality or somewhere here- 
abouts?” he asked. 

The rider, shaking his head negatively, replied : “I have 
no intelligence as to labor.” 

The equestrian put spurs to his horse, and the pedestrian 
increased his pace. An hour escaped. A second individual 
hove in sight. Morris intercepted him, but received counsel 
similar to the preceding interrogatee. 

He yielded to discouragement, knowing that he was segre- 
gated from his friends. The chaldron of his soul overflowed, 
tears fell from his eyes; he was entering the “Slough of 
Despond.” He beheld a mental picture of his departed 
adolescence, his benevolent parents, his friends in life, and, 
more than all, his bright celestial love. He thought himself 
an exile of the world. 

Presently two men afoot emerged from behind a clump of 
trees and exposed themselves. On their approach, he ad- 
dressed them : 

“I am a laborer, and one who desires to invade the fields of 
toil. For labor have I sought, but labor have I not yet found.” 

“Labor in these parts is on the wane, but I can direct you 
to a place where a vocation is lying idle,” remarked the 
smaller of the two. 

“That at which we toiled is now awaiting toilers,” dryly 
observed the corpulent ma*n. “We have just this morning 
stepped from the boundary of employment.” 

“It is an unpleasant job, though I can school you as to its 
locality,” returned the small man. “About five miles straight 
on lives a man who is in need of laborers — men who are in- 


135 


trepid and can battle with the forest, their wjeapons their axes. 
This man is somewhat of a minister, but his occupation is felb 
ing the forest and creating market for his lumber. An adroit 
workman must needs prosper in this calling.” 

Courteously thanking his informers, Morris set out im- 
patient to arrive at his destination. The journey of life is a 
difficult, an irksome, sometimes a treacherous one ; Morris was 
discovering this verity. At the setting of the sun, Morris’s 
goal was ascertained. And after a cordial meeting with the 
landlord of the premises, he was installed in his services. He 
was also aware that he stood in the presence of an itinerant 
advocate for God. 

The succeeding day our hero was to reinforce the band of 
reapers of the forest. 

The individual, lumberer, preacher, proprietor, to whom 
Morris had conferred his hire, was in stature as tall as a 
Kentuckian, lank, lithe, and literate. His physiognomy was 
pallid, and his head was thatched with carroty hair. His Hip- 
pocratic face was shielded by a Judas-colored beard; yet he 
was as grave as an owl, and as impressive as a Sheik. When 
he grasped a hand, one thought his heart was in it, it was 
so warm. He possessed a heart fertile as the Nilus, a soul 
lofty as the Himalayas. He read diligently, and used to say : 
“Shakespeare teaches one how to live, the Bible how to die; 
the one instructs a man how to contend with his fellows, the 
other with God.” His speech was a perfect literary banquet, 
and his mind was pregnant with knowledge — a womb gesta- 
tory of ideas. He probably thought that “a missionary is 
God’s man in God’s place, doing God’s work in God’s way, 
and for God’s glory.” 

This man, named Richard Bolton, emigrated from England, 
and had resided in America seven years. The family com- 
prised the husband, spouse, son and daughter. The latter were 
aged, respectively, twenty-five and twenty-two. 

The day following, a quinary of stalwart mountaineers, in- 


136 


eluding Morris Felton, could have been discerned brusquely 
marauding and devastating the boughy columns, marvellous 
sappy temples of God's antiquated groves. Morris toiled as forci- 
bly with mind as with muscle. He could not dislocate the joints 
and haunts of woe, as easily as he could fracture the colossal 
ribs of the forest. Those perverse fires in his bosom would 
not quench. A fortnight vanished, and Morris was capable of 
eclipsing his companions in dexterity of toil, having the agility 
of a venerable woodman in the swinging of the axe. 

The eclipse of sorrow that shrouded his features, was ob- 
served by all ; he seldom spoke, and was taciturn. One who 
nurses sorrow loves silence. A maxim says : “He that marries 
for love takes a wife.” Morris longed for a wife; another 
motive why he wrapped himself in this revenge and gloom. 
Love is the poetry of the heart, the painting of the soul, and 
Nature is the author and designer. 

The Rev. Mr. Bolton became, as we have seen, mutually 
attached to IMorris, who reciprocated this attachment. For 
several years this son, of Albion had been arranging to 
emigrate to the territory of Michigan, and extend his enter- 
prise. He now resolved to remove in early April, and was 
making preparations for the departure, and earnestly sup- 
plicated Morris to league with him. Eventually, two months 
remained until the exordium of the journey, Candlemas Day 
having arrived, and Morris having executed almost six months’ 
labor. The son relished this proposed achievement, as the ex- 
pedition would be accomplished in teams, comprising large 
wagons, — a sort of exodus — several neighbors’ families agree- 
ing to unite with him and form a pygmy throng. 

Luther Bolton, the son, was the picture of his father, except- 
ing his brown, glossy hair, and light brown, acute eyes — which 
had the power of dilating into furious orbs of fire, and were 
fleeter than the falcon’s, sharper than the eagle’s, fiercer than 
the basilisk’s, wilder than the lynx’s, as unsteady as an albino’s. 
He was much given to cajolery and ribaldry, with a tendency 


137 


to wassails and hlaiidliii revelries. This slmperer was as 
proud as a Sultan, was as imperious as a Mandarin, was a 
popinjay of the deepest dye^ was a miso^yilist of the warmest 
caliber, was as active and as agile arid as hardy as a Zouave. 
He walked with his feet oil earth, yet hid his head in the 
clouds ; he was vairi — a pert Coxcomb. The reputation Was 
Coriceded him of being owner of a rich conceit. Yet, after alb 
what is a inan destitute of conceit? He is like a sponge with- 
out water, a bottle without wine, a rose without fragrarice, 
a heart without love. He is simply a rag of himself, a skele- 
ton of his proper self ; he is but a shell where no ambition 
lurks. Some fancied him a human subject to great extremes. 
They saw him at once a vulture and a dove, a lion and a lamb, 
a tempest and a zephyr. He was a sort of mental acrobat, 
having acquired his knowledge by way of aural and optic 
apprehension. He was subject to the mendacity of Ananias, 
the treachery of Judas, the disloyalty . of Pilate. In the art 
of profanity he was an orator — a Demosthenes ; in the science 
of falsehood he was a philosopher — an Aristotle. He did not 
inherit such a disposition, for his parents never gave it him. 
This was the priggish mortal who exulted in the proposed 
emigration. 

The time was almost at hand for departure. Morris and 
two of his comrades in labor consented to accompany the cor- 
tege. An illusion like the mirage seemed to decoy Morris 
Felton farther from his home, if he still could designate it 
home. The minister’s motive was to follow his vocation, and, 
conjointly, assist as missionary to the Indians. 

Two months found the clique in readiness for their de- 
parture, when a quarterion of lumbering wagons created that 
procession which entered on their irksome exodus. Several 
weeks were required to attain their proposed termination, they 
having accomplished their journey unmolested. Constructing 
convenient habitations, new homes were founded, and their 
customary labor resumed, 


. Weeks sailed by with the current of time. This new ex- 
istence was a vivid mark to Morris, an accentuated pause to 
punctuate his life; it was a dash that broke the confounding 
sentence of his life. It was not only his gloominess that 
showed, for he had that within eclipsing that without, and 
which ruled him with an austere hand. The thought of Mary 
Ogden, which was yet in his remembrance fresh, had never 
left him. As the pioneer of her heart, his reeling mind, 
seriously drunk with the spirits of reflection, made him 
imagine his removal from her presence had left her in the 
quicksand of life. To fondle thoughts of her, and to embrace 
the air with heavy breaths almost gashed his heart and hacked 
his soul. He fancied, if she remained all this time true to 
him, she would out-paragon the angels, and to imagine her 
faithful, and in agony, perpetually harassed him with sadness. 
The oil of happiness, the arnica of joy, and the unguent of 
peace, serve as a panacea for a countenance chapped with 
care, a heart broken with sorrow, and a soul bruised with 
grief. Mirth is an ointment for wounded health. 

Occasionally Morris would slyly remove a faded rose from 
his valise, and, on observing this shriveled token of home, the 
heaven of his emotions would cloud, and tiny torrents of tears 
— salty tears almost freshened with forgiveness — would deluge 
his weather-beaten countenance. This rose, this Cherokee 
Rose, or Rose of Sharon, was a memorial of his home, a 
medallion by which his remembrance reverted to the past. He 
saw in the bosom of the rose a bereaving mother and a doting 
father, and his mind would become nearly sprained, and his 
heart almost liquified in the torridity of his misery. He would 
cogitate over the couplet : 

“Travel east or travel west. 

The good old home is still the best.’' 

His home was a landscape in his memory, an illumination 
in this nocturnal gloom — a lucent moon. Though it was a 
lapse of months, this vision remained unblurred on the camera 
of retention. 


139 


Grief, like the strike of the serpent, is horrible; the end is 
death, but it is a leaking death. The lusty Morris was de- 
creasing. He held himself aloof from company, and dwelt 
but in the suburbs of society. 

The panic of ’37 — that tornado of financial damage — which 
swept over the country like a tide of flame, affected slightly 
Mr. Bolton’s industry. The axes plied by vigorous arms 
created vortices in the forest. 

Morris could not at any time shake off the shackles of de- 
spair, nor unclasp the grip of anguish ; both were obstinate. His 
countenance would not translate itself to those who studied 
him; so they were still incapable to solve the cause of his de- 
portment. In order to dispel the clouds from his mind, and the 
storms from his breast, he would ensconce himself within the 
borders of some volume. He would peruse ardently, but his 
mind would wander. He would frequently try to cleanse him- 
self of his anxiety by bathing in the great Shakespearean ocean. 
He would gambol with the surf where every particle of spray 
is a word, and every wavelet a line ; but he received never a 
dash of succor. The atmosphere of grief was to his life an 
upas tainted one. 

Meanwhile, as Morris progressed with his toil of hand and 
sinew and mind, his father was journeying toward his goal 
— lessening the mile-stones which lead but to the grave. An 
apparition would occasionally bewilder his sense; it was the 
image of his father. 

Almost three years had soured Morris’s sweetness, at which 
time February was displaced by March. 


140 


CHAPTER XVII. 


PASSING OF A SOUL. 

It was early March — the month of wind and storm and 
bluster. Several days of this month were starved out of ex- 
istence. Almost three years had gone, and Morris Felton had 
not yet reappeared. He remained dead to his home and friends, 
who had lost every glimmer of hope of his return. This day 
was memorable in the Felton mansion for a lamentable inci- 
dent. Winter's wintry wind was displaying his icy fang, for 
the day was dreary; and when Cyrus Felton returned from the 
village he was ailing. In truth, the sun of his health had set, 
and the twilight of age was gathering round his life’s declining 
day. The glaciers of a long period had almost frozen his 
heart, and rendered dormant his muscles. The anguish and 
touch of his December’s age ; its woes, cares, pains, sorrows, 
and all the retaliations of his error, had punished him so that 
he tottered like a reed beneath his weight of thought and every 
grain of grief. His wife’s despair also was great, her every 
drachm of mercy mingling with her prayers for her son. 
There was no guess in knowledge where he lay in hiding. 

Another week was shuffled from the year’s deck. Nature 
was taking toll of the old man, for his illness was beginning 
to reveal a funereal aspect. A longing for his son’s return 
encroached upon his solemn hours, because he cared not to 
depart this life without his secure deliverance. 

The dark tidings of Cyrus Felton’s ailment entered the 
Ogden home. The unwelcome news enkindled within Mary 
Ogden’s heart the sparks of pity for the repentant man. An 
impulse seemed to beckon her to visit the Felton domicile, 


conceiving it might, perhaps, affect the heart of Cyrus Felton 
to such extent, that he would cancel the misunderstanding 
which stood between them. 

“I have resolved, mother, to push a conquest on Morris’s 
home again,” she said, hopeful of hopeful results. “More than 
two years have drifted by, since my preceding visit, and I now 
may be the instrument of price, do I petition for a welcome.” 

Mrs. Ogden approved of this idea. 

“Since the yoke of ill-health burdens Mr. Felton, I think a 
visit would be a touch of sympathy for which he would en- 
tender thanks,” she replied. 

“I will prepare my tongue with language suitable, and load 
my heart with kindness, and as soon as noon is past, I will 
hence to encounter him,” she articulated pleasantly. 

During the afternoon she wended her way sorrowfully to- 
ward the Felton estate. She was welcomed by Dame Felton, 
whose eyes were spectacled with grief, and features veiled in 
dark despondency. She was gratified for Mary’s visit, as she 
dwelt in harmony with the gentle girl, and loved her as a 
daughter; but tares spring up to depredate the most promis- 
ing harvest. 

Mrs. Felton’s hair had become almost like the swan in 
whiteness, during the interval of Mary’s former visit, frosted 
by the breath of sorrow. The paled woman also recognized 
a change in Mary. Sadness had expunged the rosy color from 
her cheeks ; ^nd she was further wasted down with cares, and 
shriveled leanness had embraced her face to wanness. The 
emission of tears was not yet favored with the opportunity 
to divulge the sanction of her heart ; the conduits of her eyes 
seemed frozen. 

Mary was shortly ushered into the apartment where Cyrus 
Felton lie in the cruel toils of a malignant malady. She walk- 
ed with the tread of a sprite, and the bearing of a fairy, which 
the waking sleeper an angel saw. His wife presented her. A 
line of sympathy fell athwart his countenance. Yet he was as 


142 


a mansion shrouded by mist, the sun obscured by fog, the moon 
palled by clouds, a bird deprived of flight; no hope nor life 
he held of his son’s reception. Mary’s sorrow fell in love and 
pity and tears, as she discerned the aged man. 

He raised himself languidly, and began : 

“My sincere and ill-used girl, I have committed an improper 
fault, doing my loyal son and you a wrong. However, the 
Lord will cleanse me of my fault. I entreat much pardon at 
your hands.” 

He was here impeded by audible sobs from Mary, whose 
emotions burst from her heart, and an increased shower of 
tears inundated her cadaverous face. His wife also admin- 
istered an abundance of dripping woe to medicine her grief. 

He continued : “If Morris could read the doleful pages of 
my heart, he would return instanter — as fleet as a voice from 
heaven. In my heart I have expiated all.” 

“Morris cannot have separated himself from the uses of this 
world and life ; and yet to follow the opinion of my mind, I ar- 
rive at that conclusion,” Mary interrupted sorrowfully. 

He considered this statement sadly, with nerves almost 
lethargied with torment. His friends bore a warm affection 
for him. 

“Morris may long since have gone, and it remains but for 
me to follow. As the frost upon the florets, so has love’s 
famine settled upon your cheeks, once fruitful of the ripest 
color. My folly has brought about this reverse.” 

“i^ou have made up for any error past and gone. Permit 
me now to call you father, and I will be your daughter. My 
heart has ever throbbed in unison with yours, and the mark 
of meekness is not blotted from your brow.” 

“Would that all the soreness of this act were wiped from the 
world,” he repeated softly. “Nature has contracted to a vacant 
form, a silhouette ; and life has been compressed to but a film. 
My sleep begins to brew sad dreams.” 

Mary Ogden abided the residue of the afternoon, and again 


143 


journeyed homeward. The sun was declining in the sloping 
west. She arrived home as the collecting darkness was mak- 
ing prominent the spectral objects in the gloom. 

The following day, Cyrus Felton requested Amos, his son, 
to fetch Squire Comblair, an important personage in the com- 
munity, a mirthful image of his Maker, a sturdy, thriving 
genius, a shrewd expounder of the law, and a superserviceable 
servant of the qiifll, as his services were required. He was 
of portly build, with a stature corresponding to his avoirdu- 
pois. His countenance wore a look of benevolence, and his 
fertile memory was ever corpulent with piquant jokes and 
narratives ; besides, he was a news-monger. It necessitated 
several hours to adjust the matter that the indisposed man 
deemed a requisite. The task completed, the hearty Squire 
was again escorted home by Amos. 

The old man grew gradually worse. He was resigned to 
his fate, seeing the door of life ajar. 

Mary repeated her visit several days subsequently to her 
previous one ; nothing transpired on that day. She was invited 
to out-night her favor, but her mother destined her return, 
and her obedience was loyal. 

A few more days — tapers to one who is approaching the 
goal of life’s pilgrimage — had joined the wide expanse of 
time’s eternity. It was proceeding towards the equinoctial 
period of the month. The soil was not yet provoked with the 
hoe, nor the earth cleft with furrows. The horses were stand- 
ing idle, in their stalls, the sheep bleating in their folds, and 
the cattle lowing lazily before their mangers. Nature had not 
yet clothed the world in verdant apparel. The ice that had 
bridged the rivulet in the meadow had disappeared, and the 
waters sang sweet melodies to the air. A few faint sounds— 
idle songs of approaching spring — were issuing from the reviv- 
ing earth, while along the border of the horizon was glimmer- 
ing the smile of spring. The equinoctial winds had not yet 
been aroused from their cradles, and murmur hung somno- 


144 


lently over the tranquil world. The tinkling of the sheep 
bells on the adjacent slopes did not yet penetrate one's ears, 
nor did the idle hum of busy bees remind one of the bursting 
buds. The hazy sun was thawing out from the fields, winter’s 
frosted macadam. The prima-donna of the feathered song- 
sters had just appeared, as the day dwelt in harmony with 
spring. 

On this promising day — Mary Ogden traversed again the 
road leading to the Felton mansion. As she arrived, the family 
physician — the pupil of Aesculapius — was preparing to depart, 
having administered remedies to Cyrus Felton’s invalidity 
as the budget of his knowledge directed. Mary was informed 
that the physician had pronounced his patient convalescent, 
although such proof was not readible to the household. 

At Mrs. Felton’s request, she had consented to remain un- 
till the morrow, as all had conjectured that ere the sovereign of 
day reigned again, the sufferer would deliver up his life — a 
sad and appalling prophecy. All were positive he would not 
survive the night, notwithstanding the physician’s statement 
to the contrary. On recognizing Mary, as she entered, the 
feeble man spoke : 

‘To me this twilight is but the dawning of a better and a 
brighter day. My life’s course is almost run. Life’s purple 
builders are summoned to my heart. My limbs are growing 
like the ice. In the distance I begin to perceive the star of 
hope. It shines through the cypress trees of darkness.’' 

Mrs. Felton was incompetent to control herself, knowing 
that her companion in life would soon be plucked from her. 
Tears fell with moans, even if she possessed that glimpse of 
knowledge which divines the Lord is always nigh unto a broken 
heart. 

“To err is human,” Mary solaced solemnly, “and your kind- 
ness and forgiveness will purchase you a home in yon far man- 
sion of the skies. There lamps are stars, and that which you 
perceive is a lantern, a beacon to guide you hence.” 


145 


The noiseless hours glided by. A few neighbors and friends 
were vigilant beside the sorrowful bed whereon the sufferer 
lie, upon whose brow was stamped the mark of death. All 
lapsed in quietness and silence reigned around. Not a sound 
was audible at times, save the irregular breathing of the 
moribund person, and the solemn ticking of the pendulum. 
The tocsin of the clock frequently told the time at dreary in- 
tervals. Three strokes resounded through the room ; it was 
three o’clock. The old man, feigning sleep, was aroused, and 
extended his feeble arms, and summoned his waking household 
and friends to his bedside. His seeming sightless eyes did not 
explore the room, but remained motionless, as if anchored to 
the vague beyond — the Christian’s dazzling future. In a voice 
enervated, and scarce above a whisper, he muttered : 

‘'I embark upon my journey. My life on earth is finished, 
my soul prepared, though my tasks are not completed. The 
sleep of immortality awaits me ; it is my respite. I must depart 
without my son’s forgiveness. How can he endure the misery 
of his destiny? I leave the commotion of this life imploring 
forgiveness from all.” 

Here words .of comfort to his wife and son were added, 
Morris being a shadow of the past. Mary distinguished the 
mention of her own name. 

“Mary, you are an angel. The opportunity offering, may 
you and Morris encase your loves in the coils of marriage, and 
enthrone your hearts in the purest tie of life.” 

This sorrowful girl, faded and withered — like a neglected 
flower, — burst the bonds of her emotions, and sank almost ex- 
hausted to the floor. Cyrus Felton, himself a god of kindness, 
had eventually conceded to her, her long longed for alterna- 
tive. 

In his final throes he agonized the words : “Morris ! Morris ! 
why have you forsaken home and me?” He fell motionless. 
Not a word, not a sound, not a breath was audible in the still- 
ness of the room ; the old sturdy clock even, had ceased. 


146 


Rudolph Simmerly laid his hand placidly upon the immovable 
man’s chest. He raised his countenance, and low and trem- 
bling said : 

“He is dead. He has cut the knot of action, severed the 
frail fabric of life, and to the purpose of this world he is no 
more. His soul has passed the boundary of earth.” 

The pathognomy of wife, son and friends, was legible upon 
their countenances; they were dressed in lamentation; there, 
speech of expression was more eloquent than words — a deluge 
of sorrow within a deluge of love. 

Two days subsequent, the neighbors and friends of the de- 
ceased, draped in tears of lamentation, assembled at the man- 
sion of mourning, and proceeded to assist in performing the 
last holy rites of him who was their most devoted friend. 
After a few sad threnodies and psalms, an immense stream of 
people were thronged in dolorous procession, and moving sadly 
slow toward the cemetery. None glanced upward at the curve 
of heaven, as their heads were bowed in sorrow. Arriving in 
Nature’s hallowed chapel, they congregated round that damp 
bed, that bleak couch of everlasting rest, where sleep the 
silent dead, and, with tear-stained eyes and sorrow-clouded 
hearts, they saw and heard the obsequy conducted. The inter- 
ment completed, and the final word pronounced, with the 
doleful requiems yet lingering in the atmosphere, the mourn- 
ers removed from the sanctified mortuary, and a number of 
the obsequious adherents, returned to the domicile of mourn- 
ing, to partake of the sacred viands and funeral baked meats, 
which coldly furnished the moderate tables. 

At a preferable hour in the afternoon. Squire Comblair, at 
the instigation of Rudolph Simmerly, was induced to peruse 
aloud, the contents of the deceased man’s will and testament — 
that heriditament of heritage — which was procured. The 
codicil of the protocol was, that after the widow’s decease 
Amos Felton was to be heir and sole inheritor of all the pos- 
sessions handed to posterity by the father, providing his 


147 


brother, Morris Felton, did not reappear within the drift of 
three years following her demise, when, on such occurrence, 
he again reclaimed his home, he would be entitled to a moiety 
of the entire inheritance, and would not then be reaved of his 
portion of the patrimony. 

Amos Felton was gratified over the contents of said will; 
his waltzing, greedy heart was riding on the ridgy waves of 
ecstacy; yet he was saddened over his father’s diviner self’s 
exeunt from the proscenium of action. 

Cyrus Felton had always been a favorite of his community. 
He would never stop his ears against a deed of charity, having 
observed this example from his youth up. From the midway 
of his life, until its final sunset, he had been a sturdy, regular, 
moderate and expedient man. He was true and tender, firm 
and diligent, valiant and constant, and at times compassionate. 
He, like a soldier, endured the storms and trials of life, as well 
as its sunshine and its peace. He adhered to his friends in 
times of peril, as well as during the era of contentment. To all 
he was a friend, and toward none ever bore he malice. His 
deeds were a monument erected as a remembrance in the 
hearts of his survivors. Had Diogenes 4ived in the days of 
Cyrus Felton, or he in the days of Diogenes, Diogenes could 
have found his honest man. 


148 


CHAPTER XVIIL 


WAS IT AN HALLUCINATION? 

Morris pursued regularly the path of his labor, his dexter- 
ity his aid-de-camp for toil. He was assisting 19 fell the 
woody monarchs, to bare the timbered hills of Michigan's 
primeval growth. The huge trees, before his brisk and lively 
ax, fell so speedy quick from their uprightness, as if conquered 
by a feat of legerdemain. He was now so talented in this per- 
formance, that, by small fatigue, he pursued his toil as by 
miracle. Yet his servitude was belligerent with sorrow, and 
contested by revenge. * 

The winter had nestled into the confines of spring. The 
forepart of March was prodigal in the language of ermine 
winter. The forest, however, partly sheltered our hero— 
colder from grief than the weather — from its inclemency. 
The winters, in the State of Michigan (having become a State 
since his immigration) were severe to Morris. He did not 
concentrate his mind upon, nor shield his body from the cold 
so much ; his thoughts were glancing toward the cradle where 
his suffering could be rocked to slumber, and his muscles were 
more contracted by a coldness within — a coldness contracted 
by the plunder of his joy. 

His routine of labor, while so burdened with woe, would 
have crushed him, were it not for the memory of his love, 
which was an adminicle to his strength. This glimmer was a 
star on the horizon of his melancholia ; it was Mary Ogden — 
magnified by absence. In his isolation he fancied themselves 
as far apart as the east from the west, or heaven from earth. 
His love for her was as wide as the world. At times he 


149 


imagined he recognized the cadence of her voice, the lustre of 
her eye, the impress of her hand, the melody of her foot ; thus 
was her name, her face, her joy, her love, her life so linked in 
his cerebrum of recollection. This was merely a hemorrhage 
of revery; and it invoked sorrow to furrow deeper in his 
conscience, and enhanced the pathetic air of his countenance. 

He never forgot the image of his home, so like a picture 
on the lenses of his memory. Ever before his vision of thought 
appeared the mirage of love, home, and happiness. 

During the few latter months, Morris detected a trans- 
formation in the demeanor of the daughter. She would scan 
him, and anoint him with her glance ; those lucid eyes pursued 
him like a watchful mother’s her wayward daughter follows. 
He would frequently inquire of himself : “Can it be possible 
her love ripens in the hardness of my indifference? Can she 
glean pleasure from my barren ways, and the darkness of my 
comfort? Can she garner in her heart seeds of love fallen 
from the cold staleness of my features?” However, his mind 
was not thirsting to imbibe of her commotion, being con- 
fronted by other agitations of a sterner nature. 

Meanwhile, the sun was drawing nigh to salute the torrid 
belt, bringing the vernal equinox. Just at this period a por- 
tentous circumstance occurred to whip the stubbornness of 
Morris’s anxiety. It was the bitterest event since his hegira; 
it was the nausea of his condition. The cloudy firmament of 
his thoughts grew doubly dank, and he felt himself floating 
down the stream of torment to the succorless expanse where 
his pumping heart would battle for retention of its life. Fear 
crept over him like vermin in the night. The abyss of terror 
seemed to claim him, restlessness swallowed him. He fancied 
it the forerunner of some calamity. 

On the evening of the day when assaulted by this plague, 
rest centered not upon him ; repose did not shine forth. He 
retired to his room, and dived coldly into the regions where 
klorpheus administers by his sway. His pillow refused to heal 


Ills vile disorder, serving equally as the flint. Several hours 
passed thus ; prostrate he could not stay. He arose, staggered, 
rather than walked, to the window, and gazed upward at the 
mottled arc. Stung by the cold, he shivered. He paced the 
room. The moon intruded and darkness fled from the night. 
He again immured himself where slumber reigns, but did not 
sleep. The hours of night glided by and embezzled from the 
worried man, his needed slumber. 

This day and following night corresponded to the preced- 
ing day and night; only it was more severe. Two consecu- 
tive nights — hostile nights to Morris — did not present him 
with the Gilead of slumber — the balm of strength and health 
and life. Yet he must toil. 

This phenomenon of disturbance was to Morris the pre- 
cursor of catastrophe. The lava of assault within his brain, 
strove to melt the very walls of reason. He labored with his 
comrades side by side, labored with his muscles and contended 
with his thoughts. Like a tide his perturbation was rising, 
and, like a tempest, it was increasing, as if some smoky, grimy, 
pitchy demon, by the labors of his slavery, was commanded by 
Apollyon to submerge his heart and shatter his mind, and by 
such foul means, turn this moral, righteous, troubled man to 
debasing habits. He was as silent as the darkness on the 
theme of his broken composure, and never once having emitted 
the faintest ray to lead the astonished few into his secrecy. 
He was now on the brink of dejection, almost on the verge 
of ruin. This day, the third in succession, the severest of his 
life, sought to overthrow him totally. He could not “raze 
out the written troubles of the brain,” which were leading him 
into the night of life ; and he meditated flinging himself out of 
his misery by one fatal act. 

As the weary laborers were plodding their way homeward, 
the breeze increased into soughing requiems. 

Morris feasted sparingly at tea, and his deportment was of 
such a vein as to attract unusual attention. The daughter of 


the household stole furtive glances toward him, while in her 
eyes he could have descried trickling spheres of moisture issue 
from their fountful veins. Her mind grasped for Morris, her 
heart bled for his company, and her soul ached for his love; 
yet he was icicle cold toward her, and of much reserve. She 
felt for him, she pitied him, she loved him ; but with a hidden 
feeling, pity and love. She would have mantled him with 
folds of consolation, had she been gilt with such a gift. But 
she was bashful. 

To assist the evening on apace, or, to reduce the spleen of 
angry torment, Morris strolled about the adjacent haunts, 
wishing to evade conversation. His thoughts wandered to- 
ward home as a centre, a focus, a very hub. He re-entered 
the house as the clock was striking nine, and shortly afterward 
was busy in his Bible. But he was unable to focus his atten- 
tion upon the tenor of the volume ; his mind was rambling. 
He closed his book, and scaled the stairs, resolving to battle 
with the bellicose night, in all its weirdness. 

As Morris pre-ordained, this was a formidable night. He 
alternately paced the room, and in his bed sought recourse ; 
he could not regale himself in slumber. He persevered to 
drown his thought, his mind staggered ; then he hearkened to 
the storm, he struggled for breath, his brain was ransacked 
with scotomy. 

Morris’s agitation seemed contagious, having conferred itself 
to the air. The very atmosphere had taken up the turmoil. 
The howling wind was sighing through the leafless trees with 
bitter sharpness ; cloudlets — those fleecy, aerial islands — were 
driven along, concealing sundry patches of the azure dome ; 
the lazy owl — that scandal of the night and companion of the 
moon — proclaimed his direful omen to the air ; and the sough- 
ing storm was choiring a Te Deum on every string and chord 
and note of night. This garrulous- wind, like an invisible jug- 
gler or unseen Ariel of the skies; this hoarse and harsh and 
growling musician, and terrifler of the mind; this gamy ele- 


152 


ment, that, with ghastly palaver, tongues the scale and runs 
■the gamut; this pugilist of the clouds, delirium of the heavens 
and weird prowler of the earth and sea ; this fateful and 
treacherous force of the world ; this restless breath of the gods 
was then and there not much in excess of Morris’s upheaval. 

So, usurped of sleep and the last vestige of what remained 
of peace, he was standing before the window and gazing at the 
swimming sky. His bones were pierced with a heating ache, 
his nerves quivered, and his muscles were gasping for repose. 
He seemed but a true companion to the owl, blinking in the 
night of terror. 

“This earth is powerless to ease my pains,” he thought. 

He again took to his couch of slumber. Immediately after 
a quaint clamor at the door — strokes as of a cudgel, or shil- 
lalah — three strokes measured in succession, caused him to 
sit erect, and listen astounded. All again developed into 
silence, save the rough bellowing of the euterpian storm. The 
horologe had not long since touched three. Suddenly an il- 
lumination, a sort of vivid flash appeared to flicker through 
the room like an electric spark, or like a darting meteor. He 
gazed stifled in wonder. ^Scarce had it disappeared, when 
tones were faintly audible. He hearkened wildly amazed. 
“Morris ! Morris ! why have you forsaken home and me ?” 
he recognized spoken in his father’s intonation. His hair 
stood in fear, bristly with fright, quilled at his incubus. “What, 
my father’s voice?” he would have ejaculated, could he have 
moved his tongue and lips which were paralyzed by his waking 
nightmare. 

He was sitting rigidly erect a while, and then sank down 
limp and exhausted, s.eeming apparently calm like the sky, 
tranquil like the moon, easeful like the easeful sleep. This 
curious pnigalion was the bursting of the carbuncle which his 
terror had drawn to head ; for he was soon coolly sipping from 
the font of slumber. He had fallen into sleep — the counterfeit 
of eternal sleep. Oh, what misery had he endured during this 


153 


trinoctial olio? It was a hallucination complete, the climax 
of three years’ desertion from home. 

Morris had not yet awoke. The prompt morn was stealing 
on, and the scattered stars^ were pining away owing to the 
atrophy of the night. He was . now aroused by the violent 
closing of a door. Three hours of nurture had provided for 
his need; they were sweet hours of repose. The wind had 
subsided. The day promised to be one of leniency. 

The trinight’s excitement of Morris seemed to have died 
out like the storm. Had he related his vision to the minister’s 
son, he would have given it faith, as he was as superstitious 
as any particular Indian his father was essaying to muster 
within the palisades of Christianity. He also gave much 
credit to sorcerers, hypnotism and witchcraft. 

April had now come, the key of the year, the door of the 
seasons. The tide of Morris’s uneasiness was ebbing, but a 
new cloud was forming on the welkin of his mind ; the malady 
of nostalgia began to batter at his door. He was homesick. 

‘T am about to desert the woody cause, and turn my face 
toward home,” he said to his comrades in toil. 

Another sentence almost escaped his lips ; at the eleventh 
hour, at the fifty-ninth minute, yea! at the last second of 
thought he withheld it. 

‘T will flee as a bird to my mount of love, th^ Ararat where 
the ark of my contentment rests.” He thought further : “Per- 
haps father has long since annulled his firm command !” 

Morris would have undertaken a task as difficult as Per- 
seus’, or as Sisyphus’, or even as the twelve tasks of Hercules, 
ere he would have resigned his claim for Mary Ogden — the 
tempting peace of his mind. 

As April marched along, so Morris’s mind was moving — 
moving toward the apple of his eye ; and his thoughts were 
reaching — reaching for the dawn where first he saw the light ; 
and his hope was calculating — calculating the welcome of fond 
words yet unforgotten. Had he had the wings of Mercury, 


154 


he would home have hied himself, with a speed fleeter than 
pigeon’s wing — as swift as his thoughts. He felt he had been 
a hermit in the wilderness a sufficient length of time, and ap- 
prised the timber speculator of the drift of his intention. 

am informed by ‘the heavy beating of the summons within, 
which tends to lure me home, that I am wanted at my home,” 
he said. 

All endeavored to rally Morris to brave a longer siege, but 
his purpose was as inflexible as the pines. 

The intelligence of Morris’s motive began to circulate, and 
soon spread like a forest fire. By those whom he was con- 
sidered a mysterious person, he was now conceived as being 
a minor sun, soon to be enveloped with the social halo of a 
home. On receiving these tidings — azure tidings to her, — the 
minister’s daughter was affected. She turned pale instantly, 
her heart palpitated, the structure of her hopes almost col- 
lapsed. Soon Morris would be separated from her forever; 
moreover, she loved Morris, though in a manner similar to 
that in which Ophelia loved Hamlet. The blossom of her 
love, developed to fulness, and as silent as its hue, was abiding 
the time when IVforris should monopolize the honey of its 
treasury. So her dower was a sleepless night, when she was 
devising plans to seize Morris and all his love, and so interrupt 
his near departure. At present we will not disturb her love’s 
high aim. 


155 


CHAPTER XIX. 


OTHER TWO LOVERS. 

^Tt is past the middle of the night, and the 
broad hour had sped. Were it not best for us to slowly pace 
towards home? The crowd is fast disbanding and the ranks 
upon the floor are being thinned.’^ 

These words were uttered by a fickle, flushed, fidgety, 
frolicking, fatigued belle to Amos Felton, at a dancing party, 
given by a friend and neighbor in commemoration of her 
birthday. 

'The night has not so far gone but what we can remain a 
little longer,” responded Amos cheerily. "Come, honey, my 
sugared delight, let us assist to do the following schottische.” 

"I shall not be able to foot me home if all my energy is 
• forfeited,” she declared. "But I will consent to remain through 
the coming schottische if you will then join my wish for turn- 
ing homeward?” 

Both Amos Felton and this beaming, dapper damsel loved 
to rally to assembled crowds, trifle in the dance, and dally to 
the restless sound of music. They likewise moved as joyously 
across the promenade of life as on the dancing floor. 

The anxious minds of many, for some days, had been con- 
verging toward this April night, which would grant them 
privilege to sharpen their pleasures with the sauce of the 
dance, and render their joys keen with the dessert of various 
other spprts and pastimes. And the day arrived. Evening 
tame on apace. ^ 

It was a night that flavored of the estival season of the 
year. The trees were beginning to don the garb of verdure, 


and the meadows were being bedizened in green. The world, 
like a woman, dresses gaudily at the opening ball of the 
season. The twinkling stars without were glittering in the 
sky, and the twinkling feet within were moving in accord with 
the merry music. The joyful stream of humanity on the 
waltzing floor, continued without cessation. The waltz, the 
polka, the quadrille and the schottische were performed, and 
gracefully unwound. It was a school where the subtle step 
was practiced ; a perfect academy where poetry was unrolled 
■ from human limbs, and music imbedded from sprightly feet, 
and latent love unsealed from ogling eyes. Ruth ,was a flower 
fragrant with the diversion, and her partner was drinking 
deep from the cup of consolation. 

There was, however, one despitefully sad and dejected coun- 
tenance in that social band of whirling forms. This coun- 
tenance, almost a grimace, curdled with the vinegar of sus- 
picion, was once the handsome face of a young, racy and 
genteel gentleman, who, now, in the bustle of this throng, 
moved sorely to and fro with drooping spirits. His suspicious 
actions proved he envied Amos Felton. His eyes followed him 
closely. When he perceived the vivacity and merry twinkle 
of the eyes of a certain gaudy female figure, as she curved, 
nerved and swerved her way tastefully through the excited 
flood, and gazed with sweet satisfaction into Amos Felton’s 
eyes, the flame of jealousy darted forth from within him. 

What secret lurked in the quagmire of this yonker’s heart? 
What fault of Amos Felton’s did he scent, that he should 
pursue him so, and weigh him so attentively on the steelyards 
of his imagination? Perhaps he also loved this maiden — the 
pride of the dance. 

When the amorous Amos would smile lovingly upon her, 
she would blush ; the circulating buflfets of the ruddy substance 
would tilt in her face. Amos prided himself a Narcissus, who 
saw his beauty imagined in the eyes of the fair sex. More- 
over, when Amos Felton and his peerless jewel of love egressed 


157 


from the house where was unfurled the flag of joy, they were 
secretly pursued by this selfsame piece of jealousy. They 
were unconscious of the form that haunted their footsteps. 

“Did you not observe how Arthur’s busy eye ruled over my 
movements this entire evening?” she observed with some dis- 
pleasure. “He receives it sadly to his heart that I have turned 
the current of his favors, and replaced it by another’s. Sev- 
eral times did he approach me warmly and begged of me his 
rival to renounce. He said it would revive his sinking life.” 

“Could he not sway you and thus stalk down the alley to 
your heart?” Amos whimsically inquired. “He once occupied 
that chamber of your heart which you have so kindly delivered 
up to me.” 

Amos was familiar with her mind, not less her heart; yet 
such inquiries, jests, and counsels are ever succulent, never 
stale, and do not mold with age for those pedestrians who 
trod and joggle along the highways of love. He wa^ an in- 
strument her love played on, to which, like a dryad, she 
danced; and she was a heaven his eyes explored, to which, 
like stars, his thoughts clung. 

“I follow the bend of my heart ; the drops of life partake 
of works which blend me to my choice.” 

The night was dark, and this couple were not sensible of 
being pursued. Once they stopped, Amos supposing he had 
heard the sound of footsteps following. The sleightful sleuth 
must have ventured within reach of the lover’s artful ears. 
The darkness prevented Amos Felton from detecting a figure, 
a silhouette some distance in the rear. Resuming their w'alk, 
they expended their laughable and lovable, bonmots in pithy 
interlocutory. Stray flakes of their discourse fell into the pit 
of hearing and nearly froze the several senses of the third 
member of this night parade. His gloomy night within bore 
an analogy to the pitchy night without. 

“Ruth, by your earnestness of speech you capture me and 
cement my heart to yours. Your truths are lassoes which make 


a captive of my love. You are a living chromo to my senses, 
all five, none lying idle, as I can see the glister of your love, 
hear the rustle of your love, feel the magic of your love, smell 
the fragrance of your love, and taste the sweetness of your 
love ; and if to love each other squarely we continue, we will 
be the happiest, the merriest, the j oiliest, the most delightful 
brace of lovers from both far and near.” 

Now love gives labor to the mind, ease to the heart, life to 
the soul, grace to the body, and blessing to the conscience. 
Ruth was as luminous as day ; she surpassed others as sunlight 
does moonlight, moonlight starlight, or starlight candle-light. 

“I conceive to my pleasure that great love shews forth itself 
in you, Amos, and I am now aware that you truly enshrine 
yourself in my heart,” she said jollily. “I will term you my 
lottery, as you enrich my love ; my banquet, as you give my 
eyes leave to feast at your pleasantness. You are my hope, 
my wealth, my world, my life, as it was you who struck the 
true sense of my delight.” 

It was a silent night. Not a sound permeated the dark- 
ness, save the tread of the couple homeward bound, and their 
cheerful merriment. The geysers of their mirth were a pan- 
pharmacon for all petty troubles. Ruth was a star on earth, 
gleaming in this shroud of darkness ; darkness ? blackness ! 
yet the heavens were all aglow, ablaze with the radiant jewels 
of night. And Amos was absorbed in her matchless voice ; it 
appeared to balm the thoughts of his mind, which were oscil- 
lating like the billows — not in the Styx of despair, but in the 
Jordan of rejoicing. 

After a brief pause, in which he appeared to have varnished 
his thoughts, he said : 

“How can I fail to reciprocate the love of so exquisite a 
lover? You are a boat, luminous in this diluvian gloom; I 
only a pilot of adventure to tow you safely to your haven. 
Feeding on your wholesome love, my affection grows strong 
and large. Like a morning star, you lodge in that fair sky 


159 


where my eye cannot hesitate but follow ; and your beauty 
hangs upon your cheeks like a rainbow on the clouds. You 
are the angel, the soul of this delightful night, which soul I 
shall be ever ready to embrace.” 

“You make me flighty with the praise of your lips — those 
messengers of love, twin to the eyes,” she said. “You are 
true fidelity, Amos, I know you are ; I will be ivy to my oak.” 

“I am serious, Ruth, most serious serious. It were easier 
to stab the air, bruise the waters, wound the wind, massacre 
the night, or put the clouds to sword, than for me to present 
you one lean, cold slice of falsehood.” 

“Amos, that you speak truthfully, is too true a truth. It 
contents me more to look upon your face, to hear your voice, 
and to hold your arm, than any other acquaintance in the 
world. I had rather satisfy my eyes and ears, and delight my 
sense of touch, and appease the longings of my heart and soul 
before your grace and love one hour, than two times two score 
and two, before any rival for my hand, heart, or my entire 
self.” 

Having this jaunty maiden appear, it becomes a duty to 
present her. We will, call her Ruth Maybloom, a name as- 
sociating with her loveliness. 

Ruth was light, airy, tidy, spruce, and trim. The flush of 
nineteen springs had wrought their art upon her cheeks; she 
was not only sweet nineteen, she was exquisite nineteen. Her 
bright, black eye eflfulged a lively lustre. Her hair was dark, 
short, banged and fringed, with her temples hid beneath her 
flossy locks. She was a light brunette, with a brace of roses 
living in her cheeks. Continuous June was on her countenance, 
and May in her heart, as well as April’s sunshine in her eyes, 
and October’s richness in her voice. She was a kaleidoscope 
of fashion, and indulged in the poetry of dress ; her fancy 
gewgaws, flaring ribbons, gauzy laces, and flashy jewelry, 
demonstrated such the truth. She was as pretty as a pink, 
merry as a lark, charming as a bird-of-paradise, lively as a 


wren, as attractive as a Venus ; keen of eye, fluent of tongue, 
lavish of* smiles, bold in love, artful in wiles, showy in cos- 
tume ; such was this feminine magnet. The toilet of love she 
practiced as well as the toilet of beauty. This blithe, brisk, 
sunny mademoiselle was an incendiary of hearts, a juggleress 
of souls, an enchanter of minds, an author of jealousies; she 
attracted the plebeian youth in a tide of dizzy admiration ; she 
was the moon of society, shining in the masculine sky. Love 
and joy were the twin children of this virgin damsel. Love 
in her heart, was what the sword is in a captain’s hand ; it 
commanded men. Coquetry was her talisman, and love was 
always in order. As a flower loves the sunshine, or a star 
night, so loved she love. Her heart was generally patulous 
to Cupid’s pranks. Butterfly in gayety, humming-bird in 
sprightliness, dove in love, parrot in talk, swan in niceness, 
canary in vivacity, was subtle Ruth. She was an actress on 
the stage of pleasure. Her ear, eye, nose, mouth, chin, hand, 
nails : every protuberance that ornaments the human form, 
were in such exquisite proportion formed, as if she were an 
angel sculptured by an Angelo. She was a thorough flirt, a 
frivolous maiden well lessoned in the art. 

This is the belle that Amos Felton — also a paragon in the 
comedy of love — won by his pawky vaunts. Her heart for- 
merly divided between many, Arthur the richest slice, was now 
in the possession of Amos. 

Amos Felton had known of Ruth several years, but fell 
into close acquaintance — perhaps a serious acquaintance — four 
weeks prior to the evening of the dance, when she at once 
became his pearl of price. It was also in society where 
supple steps were measured by the notes of music, where she 
became smitten with the storm of his eclat. Ruth had fairly 
launched her heart upon the sea of love, or, rather, pleasure, 
one year before, and during that short, swift and sugared 
year, had numerous suitors sought to press her hand. In the 
forepart of the voyage, her heart perched upon one who ruffled 

i6i 


6 


up her placid bosom of alfection. Soon the waves of love were 
rolling mountain high. This lad gained her love only to be 
replaced by another and a grander; this, her first young con- 
querer, was their pursuer from the dance. Thus the e-clair- 
cisse-ment of this dejected youth is explained. As his chances 
for this lovely maid began to ebb, grief began to flow ; the tide 
was working several ways. 

“Now that our loves are fairly on their way with hopes of 
future promise, let them live truly and not expire in untimely 
breasts,” the pleased girl enunciated. 

“Like a streamlet in its course, an arrow on its journey, the 
earth on its axis, or a thought in its enlargement ; so it is mete 
our loves continue in the course of life,” her lover encouraged. 
“We will be as steadfast as mountain peaks.” 

“As true as circulation is to life, or life to breath.” 

Ruth now was delight, love, rapture ; she was day enveloped 
by night, light surrounded by darkness. She was a Cleopatra 
drinking the pearl of joy. Her mind was decked with pleasure, 
her heart adorned with love, her soul bedizened with peace. 
Over the calyx of thought rose the corolla of love, and from 
the corolla of love protruded the stamens of happiness. 
Woman, when benign, makes joy sublime, love divine; and 
that love, when love is with love, softens, shortens, and poet- 
izes hard, long and prosy hours. 

“My love, Amos, shall be ever like a ring^ of gold, round, 
pure and worthy of the wearer,” Ruth interpreted, laughing 
with emotion. Her laughter was music and every word a 
song. 

They were nearing home. Not a sound, exclusive of the 
noises of this happy pair, was heard, except the watchful 
voice of some house-dog in the distance. Their conversation 
dwindled, for, not desirous of disturbing the slumbering oc- 
cupants of the house, their voices waxed dim. They entered 
the gate noiselessly as shadows, and took position on the step 
by the porch. 


CHAPTER XX. 


THE SOURCE OF RUIN. 

Amos and Ruth, taken unawares, the pursuer, the lasslorn 
lad, the jilted, jealous and distracted lover, this sad Arthur, 
the third stalking figure of this night’s parade, concealed him- 
self in the gloomy background, where he remained like a 
skulking, couchant thing or foe, vigilant, and thirsting, per- 
haps, for vengeance. 

Amos was intently pouring the wine of love’s fond ca- 
resses in Ruth’s ears. He was in the very atmosphere of his 
passion, it was his home ; she was in the extreme height of her 
levity, it was her Paradise. With tender words and gentle 
other means, he began to unclasp her thoughts and the weak- 
ness of her nature, and she became lenient to his curiosity. 
As an athlete in the arena of love, it seemed not difficult for 
Amos to maintain control of her heart. Night formed a cur- 
tain for their secrecy, yet they were detected by him who was 
watchful in the shadow. And as the gloomy lump of revenge, 
this shadowing human watched, his flashing gaze ignited al- 
most the very atmosphere, as thus a period of time in silence 
vanished. 

Observing these close lovers emerge from the obscurity and 
approach the gate, they rose before him like an aurora of the 
night. He unconsciously moaned aloud and turned home- 
ward, satisfied as to his own complete defeat. 

Amos started. A human groan ! Could it be possible ? He 
made an expedition with his eyes, in the direction whence the 
sounds proceeded, when a dull sketch of a dusky form grew 
visible, and which instantly vanished like a meteor. The 


163 


time was too abridged to mark it, and he fancied it perhaps, a 
slip of the eye, a mere phantasm ; yet it harrowed him. Who 
could thus assail the privateness of his affairs in love, by spy- 
ing in upon him? He remained thoughtful a moment. His 
cylinder of thoughts rotated in his mind — the engine of his 
brain. 

Arthur Lorvan, as if by some enchantment, had stealthily 
followed, jealously and unknowingly, this jubilant pair lost 
in the commingle of love. He was scarce conscious that he 
was pursuing; he knew, however, that he should yet be the 
crowned monarch of her love, and be joyously throned in 
that cruel eye and savage heart — once gentle eye and peaceful 
heart to him — where Amos Felton now in fulsome pride was 
sitting. He also observed that he was frustrated in his siege 
of love, and that Ruth had discreetly fallen into the snare of 
his competitor’s wileful strategy. Arthur capitulated on the 
moment minus parley. He retreated crestfallen, hapless and 
dispirited. A wail of lamentation, a blunt groan, issued from 
the severed trachea of love, which articulation Amos fancied 
he distinguished. 

^‘Did you not perceive a groping form, a shadow, or some 
ghost disappear behind that lilac bush?” inquired he of Ruth 
excitedly. 

She sent her sight in that direction. 

“Nothing!” she responded faintly. 

Arthur Lorvan and Ruth Maybloom had together walked 
the course of love some four dear months or five. Their dream 
of colleagued love was now disjointed, and forever. As the 
unripe grape is shaken off from the vine ; the perfumed flower 
from the bush ; or the frosted chinquapin from the tree ; so was 
he precipitated from Ruth’s endearment. He had won a 
Marengo to meet a Waterloo. 

Arthur Lorvan was clerk in the only storehouse in the 
village. He was creditor of an able brain, a clear mind, a 
subtle understanding, a liberal education, and a snug, neat. 


164 


little bank account. Upright in honesty, sincere in truthful- 
ness, constant in business, refined in society, potent in morality ; 
in this bunch of virtues he had few contemporaries. His 
brown, curly hair hung in clusters round his head ; his dark 
gray eyes lit his countenance with a brilliant glare; smiles 
were perpetually riding on his frank and merry countenance; 
his feminine voice was ever entreating ; and he was handsome 
and agreeable withal, and further blessed with Samaritan kind- 
ness. He was as short as an Esquimaux, convivial as a Ger- 
man, as thrifty as a Chinaman, compact as an Arab, hardy as 
a Switzer, and stalwart as a Turk. He was an infinite little 
Sandow in his sphere. He was an admirer of amusements, 
such as were diluted with honesty and mingled with morality. 
As Amos Felton saw the world with Belshazzar eyes, Arthur 
looked at it with the soul of an Apostle; his rank was good, 
his reputation better, his character best. His manners were as 
sculpturesque as his morals. 

As we have no further occasion to refer to him, a few re- 
marks, — the aftermath of his broken thread of love, the ap- 
pendix of his book of life — might be supplied. 

When Ruth Maybloom closed her aflfection with him, he re- 
versed his progress, turned rapid round, and retraced his steps 
from the plateau of virtue to which he had attained, towards 
the vale of ignominy. He was in a snarl of despair. 
Abandoned on the desert of sorrow, he wandered towards the 
everglades of tribulation ; he was struggling in the quicksands 
of anxiety, and was fast sinking in the earth of endless night. 
He coveted Ruth’s heart, his worthy situation fled from him. 
So as week succeeded week, his weak existence dragged him 
down, down, down toward the shades of torture, the tangled 
vapors of a disreputable life. Envy was lurking in his mind, 
and jealousy in his bosom. He was worried as Antony, ex- 
cited as Macbeth, jealous as Othello, melancholy as Hamlet, 
mad as Lear. The wounds of his love smarted to be called 
into memory, as his remembrance clung to his past dead joy 


— the mansions of his fancy, the buildings of his love. On the 
retinue of his eye, were nevermore to be photographed, the 
verdant growth of spring, the golden harvests of summer, the 
purple decay of autumn, the white sheet of winter ; and hence- 
forth all was ceaseless, endless, mirthless, lifeless life, nature- 
less nature, heavenless heaven, godless God. 

He turned his footsteps to the city, his money following. 
He would drown his troubles in the flowing bowl. The events 
of the past in his diary of memory shone like a sun, and 
scorched his brain like a Mecca. Transformed as he was, 
confounded is the proper word, he was but the bestial part of 
himself. His accumulated wealth increased the slender bulk 
of the bar-keeper’s drawer, the gambler’s table, and the har- 
lot’s world. He would guzzle the horrid stuff of intoxication ; 
he would sponge the inner man with the purple beverage, 
saturate his blood with the poison of the still, and soak his 
stomach with the erosive schnapps, which became a gulf into 
which all streams of the boosy liquid ran. 

Finally he became a scapegrace, a scalawag, a hideous raga- 
muflin. Once he was a blossom on the face of society, now he 
was an ulcer on the breast of the earth. He was but a shadow 
of himself; he was a dethroned, dissipated, depraved de- 
bauchee. At last, in some dozen or sixteen months, he shed 
his mortal yoke, and departed for that pasture where the mind 
alone can perceive. Thus, by losing his love he lost his joy, 
by losing his joy he lost hope, by losing his hope he lost 
money, by losing his money he lost friends, by losing his 
friends he lost honor, by losing his honor he lost reputation, 
by losing his reputation he lost character, by losing his char- 
acter he lost life, by losing his life he lost immortality. The 
path he followed, follow many more. 

Two stole from the clock. Amos Felton was just seeking 
egress from the gate. 

‘^As you have my love, heart and hope, take my soul with 
you, too; I have been too fond a lover,” Ruth explained. 'T 
have permitted you to veil my mind and rob me of my will.” 

i66 


He stopped, turned, and lip touched lip. 

“Like a valiant lover, my visits will be repeated with re- 
current promptness, and not a spark shall be extinguished 
from the fire of my heart,’' he returned tenderly. 

He entered on his departure. 

“The lark will carol her melody ere you retire,” she pur- 
sued. 

“The lark is not the singing gale of night,” he reflected. 
“The day wakes the lark, not the lark the day.” 

He was soon swallowed up in the darkness, his mind rotary 
with clever thoughts. Ruth, left to herself, was joyous and 
contented, yet serious and uneasy. Her extreme love did 
worry her a trifle. 

A week passed. Her Amos had not appeared. Two weeks ; 
no Amos. She was unable to account for his absence. Her 
heart remonstrated against his unconcern toward her, which 
remonstrance settled on her mind; it was the fruit of worry 
to her; it placed upon her heart the primal bandage of dis- 
order. 

While cogitating through her fear, in which she heaped upon 
Amos sordid imprecations, considering him a filthy miscreant, 
and such like, her disappointment was alleviated on her next 
visit to the village. She did not fail to do homage to 
the post-office, where she received written consolation from 
Amos — an epistle of love. She recognized his autograph, and 
could scarcely retain her heart until she had broken the seal, 
and with all the ardor of a faithful sweetheart consumed 
the fragrant fumes of thought as she hurried her eyes with 
eager haste adown the page. She read the following : 

“My Gentle Ruth : 

“This is written to one from out whose loving countenance, 
shines the sunshine of her smiles, which has the magic power 
to thaw and melt the most sorrowful frozen heart. 

“Ruth, you are the pleasant thought of my mind, the joy 


167 


of my heart, the medicine of my soul, the religion of my 
happiness, and the refuge of my life. (All that twice, and 
more yet; yet more, and twice that all.) You are a goddess 
of love, sitting on the throne of joy; in fact, you are the most 
brilliant treasure of this world. 

“Beneath the velvet of your countenance, lie ambushed your 
enharbored smiles, which are as welcome to me as the open- 
ing curtain of the fresh and dewy morn, and which resemble 
an aureole to your shining fadfe. 

“I have already wedded to you — not really wedded, although 
it were my Paradise on earth to so be — the fact, that your 
hypnotic actions were the result of my shedding many tears, 
each one filled with happy thought, and every thought filled 
with love, and all that love filled with light, and all that light 
filled with heaven. 

“Ruth, you are the blush of morn, the sunshine of day, the 
twilight of evening — all mingled in harmony. Your dazzling 
eyes shine from your face, bedaubed with ruby cheeks, like 
radiant stars from the blue heaven. One can drain the sweet- 
ness from your lips, as an infant the flood of life from out of 
its mother’s breast. 

“It is impossible to tell whether it is owing to your angel 
beauty, your divine perfection, your enchanting smiles, your 
celestial radiance, or your eternal happiness that envelopes 
you like a halo, that causes my ready nature to say here that 
I will meet you at your home on Thursday evening if the 
weather does not introduce a discord to prevent it. A raking 
fever took possession of my stage of health, and bore me 
down, without a drachm of charity, to an obedient bed. That 
prevented my most delightful visits. I am again upon my 
feet, with secure evidence to receive again the embrace of 
former health within two days or three. 

“When I spend such bland and cheerful nights beneath the 
silent stars with you, when all quiet Nature seems to woo in 
the shadowy moonlight, my heart is not at easy rest until I 


i68 


have the secret pleasure of kindly meeting you again. And 
when I also have the thrilling pleasure of holding your lily 
hand within my own, with my arm tenderly clasped around 
your happy, heaving breast, with flushing cheeks hot pressed 
against your loving own ; I feel within my silent self a tide of 
pleasure known only to one who strongly loves. 

“This is written from one who has spent a sleepless night, 
and who certainly loves to be with you through many joyful 
evenings. 

“Your ever loving 

“Amos.’^ 

She heaved a gentle sigh of relief. Her mind pierced his 
letter to the heart, and imbibed the precious contents line by 
line, the warm flood of love drop by drop. The perusal of this 
message, restored her to her normal state of contentment : it 
laid upon her pained soul a goodly balm. The flush of rapture, 
and the buoyancy of delight resumed their equilibrium, and 
again the pulse of joy beat cogently. 

“Even the thought of his love constructs my heart into a 
stronghold of passion,” she thought as she kissed his name 
even as she would his lips had he been present. 

In various ways her manners were identical with her lover, 
Amos’s. Her heart, like his, was slave to her eyes ; she was 
attracted toward the garden of pleasure as moth to the light. 
Amos’s supple movements were so planted in her eyes, and his 
praises so grafted in her heart, that her mind was ever looking 
toward him — the guardian of her love, the sentry of her hap- 
piness. 

Amos Felton, as he informed Ruth in his letter, had, indeed, 
contracted a fever, and took to his bed, where, after some 
ten or dozen days, he was relieved of his infirmity, and again 
took up his bed and walked. His usual visits were renewed 
to her, where he always found a grateful welcome. 

Truly, Ruth was a book, her every breath a page, and every 


169 


smile a word. There might be said, in addition, that Ruth 
knew no father nor mother, being illegitimately conducted 
into the world. When but four years of age, she was affiliated 
to the care of a well-conditioned family. In this foster home, 
she received the necessary attention, and the utmost caution 
was provided to enable her to walk in the way of light and to 
lead a profitable life. 


170 


CHAPTER XXL 


THE ERUPTION OF A HEART. 

James Dallon^ who resided a mile and a-half north of the 
village, is another character who appears in this story. He 
was journeying toward his twenty-sixth milestone — the mark 
of his age. He was the eldest born of the family ; his parents 
were thriving and industrious. James, alias, Jim, stood above 
the medium height, was built meagrely, though compactly, 
able, with fulvous hair sparsely covering his cocoanut head, 
light grey eyes, a glabrous lip, smooth and scarce-haired face, 
and a sallow complexion. His squinting eyes acquired for him 
the cognomen of “Squinky-eyed Jim.” He was dry of speech 
and sterile of etiquette; his tongue generally did but walk 
through discourse. But when courage dropped into his heart 
to loosen the thoughts of his mind, he could charge through 
ranks of words and scatter whole platoons of sentences. At 
intervals he was as taciturn as a sagamore, and as listless as 
a Hindoo god. He was not a fascinating actor in love’s sweet 
drama, as he was not handsome, or even graceful. One apti- 
tude he was possessor of ; he was a clever boxer. He was the 
Corbett of the community. He alone, among fistic stars, was 
competent to out-rival Morris Felton; in the pugilistic art he 
was dubbed king, being so adept a child of fistiana. In any 
other role of amusements he was very like a mullet on land or 
a pullet in water. He was an infidel. His similar verdict 
against the Koran would have procured for him the epithet of 
Giaour. 

This is a picture of the nervous being who mustered courage 
to commune with Mary Ogden. He was plotting a crusade 


of love against her ; he was striving to create a sally on her 
heart. His purpose was to browse upon the privacy of Morris 
Felton’s love’s society. Having out-fisted him in the sparring 
arena, he now had^ disciplined himself to overthrow him in 
love’s encounter. 

Mary was engaged at the Dallon home to float her needle 
on the waves of action. A week had almost passed, and, in 
the Dallon household, as at her home, Mary was seriously sad. 

It happened on a Saturday afternoon. The entire Dallon 
family, except James, had journeyed to the city, he having 
been left to the circumspection of the farm, while Mary, within 
the house, was busily plying her needle. This was an oppor- 
tunity for James to open an engagement of the heart. For an 
entire year his affection for her was constantly warming up. 
So having buckled on the armor of tact, he was equipped for 
a triumphant siege. He debated with himself as to the most 
princely mode to dedicate his love. So placing upon himself 
a dauntless front — the front of Jove — he advanced forward 
to breast the battle where the contest would be decided by the 
cannonry of words. As he confronted the door, he faltered. 
His courage had discovered a passage of exit, and the current 
began to ebb rapidly away. He retired to recruit his bravery. 
After surgeoning the wound with the bellows of his mind, he 
infused new animation in his heart, and, with joints of zeal 
he re-advanced. Again he stood before the door. Then he 
entered. For the first time in his life, he stood alone before 
so grand a painting of the tender sex, for to enter so serious a 
charge — aspiring for her complete self. A second time his 
presence of mind seemed to have deserted him, and he scarce 
could speak a word ; his tongue appeared to cleave to the palate 
of his mouth ; the beverage of thought had not commenced to 
stimulate him yet. He had entered the room cautiously, yet 
Mary was conscious of his intrusion and could almost ascer- 
tain the drift of his intention. He approached her with a 
calumet in his mouth — a calumet of language, and a wound 


172 


in his heart — a wound of love, and an olive in his hand — an 
olive of peace, and a soul in his cause — a soul of hope. 

“Mary,” he began, “I appear before you like a meteor flam- 
ing with love’s light. The purpose of my mind, and my full 
heart’s aim, is to prepare your bosom for my love !” 

She was appalled, yet this was not unhoped for. But for 
one to undertake to change the current of her love from 
Morris, was to swell her agitation. 

“Your words, James, are serious to me, and shroud me in a 
paler sorrow and a denser,” she returned. “You should not 
hold before my troubled mind the light of your affection.” 

“Have some touch of pity, Mary, and do not word your 
thoughts with such unhappy counsel,” he said perplexed. “My 
love would be so great and grand and sweet a morsel for your 
heart as to supply your heart during all your life with peace.” 

“I never dreamed your heart contained such affection for 
me, James, yet your countenance revealed that which I some- 
times dreaded, and it now has come to this,” she murmured, 
sighing sadly. “Would it would not have it ! You will not 
with a rival’s love, seek to disjoin my love’s reliable heart of 
its true and proper love ?” 

This sorrowful one appeared to him sublime, as her sad eyes 
looked into his, her words falling into the auricles of his 
heart. He gazed into her eyes — those windows of light where 
shone no love for him — as he would study her soul. Like a 
Herschel he continued to peruse her radiance, now hazy with 
years of trouble, but simmering with light beneath the thirst 
of his wild eyes. 

“He whom you once did love is lost,” he argued seriously. 
“Be guided by your conscience, Mary, and deal with me with 
reason and with charity. I cannot endure to see your usefulness 
of beauty perish. Bereft of him whom you once bore com- 
pany, what have you done but sobbed and wept and grieved 
and suffered. Now stand I forth to fill that aching void, and 
will promise to polish up the dulness of your spirits.” 


173 


His words were mournful and were cloaked in soft emotion. 
Though his education was moderate, he spoke an elegant lan- 
guage, that is, when he did speak. He had six talents, where 
Morris Felton had ten, and Amos Felton five. His final invo- 
cation called for tears and Mary’s eyes did weep them. 

“Give outlet to your love elsewhere, James,” she replied. 
“My heart is with Morris, is he on earth or in heaven; and 
as I have it not, I have it not to give.” 

“Mary, your eyes will never again look upon Morris, nor 
your ears hear his voice. He could not, nor never did love you 
more madly than he who breathes his breath of love upon you 
at this moment. Mary, if I could place my soul before your 
eyes, you would see love so ripe, so true, so golden, in fact, 
that you could not falter.” 

“Tempt me not so strongly, and do not think to melt my 
breast,” the worried girl urged pleadingly. “My heart stable 
as the star of the north, and my soul constant as the ruler of 
the day, cannot deviate from their ” 

“I did not comprehend so elegant a mouth could show so 
brusque a tongue,” he interrupted. He searched her eyes, her 
mind, her very soul. She was silent with a silence that spoke. 

“Can I not obtain possession of a shadow even of your 
love?” he continued. 

“James, you worry me so much. Do not pursue my heart, 
but check your approach. The love I hold, is under the tute- 
lage to Morris, so your strife for my love will only be a fail- 
ure.” 

He was persevering to deftly smuggle in his coarse accept- 
ance, but the course of love did not appear smooth, nor the 
path of it straight unto him. 

“Do not speak such cold and heavy words !” he articulated 
touchingly. “Mary, I could not fail to present my argument 
whether it contain in your taste the spice of cheer, or the acid 
of dislike. Perhaps you perceive nought but tartness in my 
mode of converse, though its sense be as sweet as treacle.” 


174 


*‘I am only too familiar with your intent/’ she replied con- 
solingly, “but hasten to the rear of your remarks, and do not 
prolong you plea.” 

Joy is the pearl of the mind, love the gem of the heart, and 
purity the jewel of the soul. From this silken string of virtues 
Mary had lost the pearl; the gem and jewel yet remained. 
The pleader’s energy began to subside ; his heart began to un- 
nerve and his soul to waver, but still the spirit of love shone 
out refulgent from his eyes. 

“Your disapproval of me, Mary, will blemish my content, 
stain my hopes, and scar my life. Every crevice of my heart 
is rammed and jammed and crammed with love and love and 
love, all yours. Without the asking you can take it, it is 
cast upon you. Your beauty, your modesty, and your piteous 
sadness have provoked me into nightless love and sleepless 
night. If you reject my terms I most surely dry, burn up, reel, 
totter and fall.” 

Then hesitating, he ejaculated: “I will die, Mary, die; I 
will rush through the door to death.” 

“You had best retire, James, as the wound deepens in pro- 
portion as the time advances,” replied Mary, sadly, looking 
tenderly earnest in his supplicating eyes. “I cannot attain to 
your requirements, so do not plunge your tongue further into 
this. Your plea will be of no avail.” 

This was a miniature stroke of palsy to James; it almost 
throttled his ambition and crushed his hope. The battle is 
against the coward on the field of love; he would make an- 
other effort; it was nearing the fifth act of the drama. He 
came vis-a-vis before her, and began gravely : 

“Mary, upbraid me not. Let me have success! Drag me 
to your favor. I desire you to awake your pity. You know 
your condition, let me mend it. Do not keep your mercy 
wrapped in the background of your sorrow, or your love fold- 
ed in the regions of your bosom. My heart is sewed up in a 
sack of love, and almost bursts the seams asunder. Be no 


175 


longer shy unto my favor, but catch me up as your toy of love, 
your messenger on the journey of love’s life.” 

He hesitated, and fumbled for her hand, but she foiled him 
in his purpose. 

‘'O, Mary!” continuing, “if you would only confide your- 
self to my protection, the world would grow brighter than 
the day, and old times become new. It would allay your face 
of pain, and make your cheeks again the gambol-ground of 
smiles, your bosom the pleasure-park of happiness. Look upon 
me here ! I unfold myself to clasp your love.” 

He caught her hand up earnestly in his, but she repelled 
the grit of his advance. 

“Speak, Mary, speak!” he shot abruptly forth. “Your 
tongue is a pendulum of love’s timepiece, but it does not wag 
for me.” 

“All is useless,” she responded, with her sweetest tone of 
mercy. “As long as Orion and the seven stars continue to march 
across the heaven, and the pole star points from one same 
spot, so long shall Morris’s name and honor be held in dear 
esteem by me.” 

“I seek not to destroy his name and honor, I merely want 
your hand, your love, your name, your life ; you, the magic 
Mary.” 

She was humiliated. 

“I can never permit any other in the world, save Morris, to 
gain access to my heart.” 

She had told the faithful dictates of her beating bosom. 
James had discharged his load of love, and had pleaded as 
to almost still the heart, or transmogrify it to the hardest 
adamant. 

“I can speak no more,” he said dejectedly. “My further 
speech is in my heart.” 

He withdrew from the room, suffering with a vertigo of 
misery, and Mary was again left to the welcome of her soli- 
tude. She wept bitterly, and from the limbecs of her eyes 


176 


beady drops descended. She had failed to comply with the 
requirements of James’s forced affection. She sympathized 
with him, heart and soul, yet granted him her proper, and 
only alternative, which, otherwise, would have been a dis- 
ruption of her pawn and pledge of love to Morris. 

James had taken a mental invoice of her love, pressed upon 
her as her suitor, was a pursuivant for her hand and a Gloster 
for her heart, but she remained a stranger to his bosom. He 
was lost in a fog of thought and his heart was in a pillory of 
torture. He had climbed the height of love, his stand was 
short, he fell, and great was his fall. Also had several other 
candidates aspired for the office of her heart, but their cam- 
paigns, like James’s, were nipped in their very infancy. A 
conflagration was awakened in his bosom, which was a Rome 
with its ocean of flames — flames of bitter angush. He had 
witnessed, within the compass of an hour, his rise and fall. 
Unconscious where he was strolling, he migrated to the or- 
chard ; deprived of sight, his mind recognized ; divested of 
day, his heart was doused in gloom. Around him life, within 
him death. 

The world was animated and spoke with splendor. Nature 
was alive with tuning season’s special notes and happy chimes. 
The amorous ditties of the breezes, and the wanton waves of 
air, did fan the flame of life. The divers colored songsters, 
patterned to all sizes, were chirping and warbling their sunny 
carols, silver tones, and vocal hymns with rivulets of rhapsody. 
Every feathered throat was a crater through which poured 
the eruption of music. It was a living festival of living joy. 
The speckled butterflies idly sauntering in couples, and in 
starry numbers ; the bedizened bees heavily laden from fertile 
blossoms — painted souls of future fruit ; a few suctorial hum- 
ming birds and sundry flowery insects, gaudy as the drapery 
of Turk, were deluged with the golden sunshine. Showy 
cloudlets fringed the turban shadows on the ground. The 
flowers were turning out their glossy bosoms. The trees were 


177 


robed in the gay vesture of spring, and frescoed with various 
hues. And like the warm zephyrs of love came the romantic 
beats from the heart of fragrant nature, who wore the garb 
of springtime. From the distance came the urging voices of 
the plowmen, who were cutting with their crooked plows the 
plains and hillsides, while in succulent meadows and on emer- 
ald slopes the woolly thousands, horned hundreds, and hoofed 
scores, were grazing in content. Within this horizon was a 
perfect Eden of grandeur, a Paradise of loveliness. 

Amidst this luxury, swallowed to the eyes and ears, wan- 
dered James Dallon. He did not perceive the angel in the 
flower, the sparkle in the atmosphere, or the harmonious life 
around. He did not perceive the melody of anthems, the uni- 
son of music, the choir of minstrelsy, or the miracle of song 
produced. He seeing, saw not; hearing, heard not; he only 
felt, feeling his disaster, and dreamed, dreaming of the future. 
All he comprehended in the midst of his confusion, was an 
obscure background of stars dimned, and Mary Ogden haloed. 
His torment during that afternoon, and the ensuing week was 
a Gehenna that speech is but a frailty to picture. This down- 
fall was not to him “argument for a week, laughter for a 
month, and a good jest forever;” it was a deadly blow to his 
hope, sending him into a whirl of ataxy. 

The Wednesday following, Mary returned home. She was 
gratified to do so. Her incident with James had caused her 
to feel a sense of shame towards him subsequently, and gave 
her considerable ado. After a fortnight she was tendered a 
note. It was sent from the disappointed James. She read 
these words sadly : 

“Dear, sad Mary, — You are the only vessel in which I love 
to pour my love. I cannot brave the chance of meeting you, 
therefore, I must steal the chance of writing you. In these 
true lines, like the truthful words I spake, my heart is dictat- 
ing what my pen is writing. If I could only dip my pen in 
my heart’s deep well, and write these words in blazing lines 


178 


of red, you would see arising from this page such a flame of 
love as would dazzle your eyes in wonder. I pen these lines 
with tearful eyes, prisoned mind, broken soul, and my entire 
blighted heart’s valor. 

“Mary, were my heart a book, and every spark of love a 
page, and every seam a line, and every throb a word, and every 
purple drop a letter, and you held this book in anxious hands, 
you would read the greatest novel that your mind has ever fed 
upon. Yet you place upon me love light as air, and hate 
heavy as lead. 

“Mary, most floral Mary! you are a perfect flower garden; 
your countenance is as white as a lily, your eyes as blue as the 
violet, your cheeks a pair of lilies, your lips as crimson as the 
rose, and your breath as fragrant as perfumery ; in truth, you 
are one of nature’s divinest plants. 

“My meeting with you was a pleasure that was a pain, and 
my loving words were as sincere as snow, yet they failed to 
move you. 

“Guard these lines as you would your name. Permit this 
letter to remain a virgin to all eyes, as you yourself would 
so remain. Secret this in the privacy of your heart, as this 
is script and simple truth. You know yourself that words 
spoken fade, words written bloom ; words spoken vanish, 
words written linger; words spoken die, words written live; 
words spoken are mortal, words written are immortal. 

“Again, Mary, you are a radiant star in the constellation of 
your sex, while I am but a tainted picture of woe. Why will 
you not as a wonder of nature send a message out to lift me up 
before your eyes — those sparkling worlds in which I read the 
blessed light of love — that I may again drink of the wine of 
happiness ? 

“Another sleepless night, my love. 

Has been plucked again from me; 

Therefore, on that night, my love. 

These words I thought of thee. 


179 


My love for thee fades not, my love, 

But sounder grows each day; 

How can I neglect, my love. 

My love to thee to pay ?” 

“Poetry is the garb of love, and one in love wraps himself 
warmly in that garb ; therefore, all lovers are poets, and so 
dress themselves in that costume to appear the grander in the 
drama of life. So pardon me, Mary, for enacting my love on 
so serious a stage. 

“Your prostrate, sorrowful, and loving James.” 

Mary was attracted to this letter as though her mind was 
pinioned by some enchantment ; when, having concluded, the 
manuscript fell from her hand, even like the twin tears from 
her eyes. The letter was obedient to its missive, and came in 
a shape as melancholy as James himself formerly in 
so confident a form approached her ; it touched her bosom 
like a wand of sorcery, and distilled the liquid pity from af- 
fected eyes, icy sighs from an infected heart. The mother 
of her wisdom, the experience of love’s defeated theme, was 
a teacher of a like lesson to which James was taught. She 
knew the sorrows of one bereft of a lover. She wept bitterly 
and felt miserable ; her heart expressed a robust pity for him, 
her sympathy was large. Favor him she could not, dare not ; 
she could only amply sympathize with him, grieve with him. 

James Ballon, after six months, had almost recovered from 
the wreckage of his expectations, and shook off the debris of 
a lost attachment: and within two. years was married to an 
estimable young lady, and was living happily, prosperously, 
successfully, and with a promise of contentment to the end. 


i8o 


CHAPTER XXIL 


A SOUL LAID OPEN. 

A few days more, and April would be closed. And Morris 
Felton was contemplating to quit, early in May, his place of 
employment and Michigan. His nocturnal vagary was, as 
it were, a telegram to lure him home. He was dressing him- 
self in a condition to journey hither, and sent his mind to 
forage thoughts concerning it. “Does home yet resemble 
home? Does health embrace them all? Can I be reinstated 
to their hearts? Will Mary reconcile me to her bosom?” 
Did she continue true to the orbit of her fidelity, as her as- 
surance pledged, he would be reconsecrated to his former Para- 
dise ; but did she dwell within the limits of another’s heart, 
it would add victuals to his grief, which would founder him 
and totally. 

Edith Bolton was sore displeased that Morris should with- 
draw from the membership of their household, and especially 
from her presence. The forming buds of her passion took 
shape from his long continued presence, and now he was the 
sun from which her love received its light. For that Phoebus 
to disappear beyond the horizon of her vision would be like 
to extinguish the lustre of her hope, and lose her in the dark- 
ness of her love. 

It was an animating Sabbath. To all knowledge it was 
Morris’s final one in Edith’s father’s home, and it aroused her 
heart to a singular commotion. Peace would not console her 
more, until she communicated to him — coy marvel of her heart 
— the richness of her love, and how beneath his influence, 
it swelled to its maturity, and was struggling for his own. 


i8i 


She would be the Diana in the chase of fortune, to capture 
his affection. 

Edith was alone. She was looking from the window, while 
her eye was fixed upon the densely timbered hills. The feather- 
ed choirs jostling in the foliage, the aroma of the trees and 
blossoms permeating the atmosphere, and gaudy nature dis- 
playing wondrous grandeur, was not in accordance to her 
fancy, for she recognized it not. Earth was blank, distant; 
heaven was in her mind, and her gaze extended there. At 
that instant Morris — her image of love and happiness — was 
approaching the house, when, perceiving him, her heart — 
that instrument of peace or pain or joy — arose in her breast 
and leaped with emotion. As he neglected to tempt her to 'the 
text of love, she was determined to draft him to the conflict. 
Because she was going to do what should have been his cau- 
tious part, did give her much concern. 

He had almost reached the house. The nearer he drew, the 
nearer her heart approached her throat. It was a sure, a su- 
preme, an accidental chance, perhaps, her only one, her final 
one, which, failing, might seal her doom, wreck the world for 
her. She was nervous, confused, uncertain, and her mind 
and heart was in a tempest of excitement ; or, rather, she was 
in the element of impatience, fearing her modesty would freeze 
her speech. Her calm eyes were studious, cast in space at 
one especial point, and her countenance was blanched with 
fright, her arteries contracted with the atrophy of circulation. 
Morris entered the open door, and his wary sense at once 
caught up her pale and eager countenance. 

Edith was spring, Bermuda, heaven, and her peace resem- 
bled an infant’s, her charm a queen’s, her patience an angel’s, 
her purity a goddess’s. She was an emblem of modesty, and 
a romance of virtue, preserving a clear mind, a kind eye, a 
clean heart, and a pure soul. Her stature was such that it 
gave to her an air of command. Her silken floss of gold 
fringed her head, and all thought her sunny locks a golden 


182 


fleece, which twenty-two annual suns had gilded to gold. 
Small hands and neat, slender waist and sweet, delicate skin 
and fair, golden voice and rare, were marvels belonging to 
her beauty. She was wealthy; her affluence consisted not in 
money or lands ; it was exposed upon her person ; gold, pearls, 
rubies, diamonds, cameos and sapphires comprised her dowry. 
Her gold was her hair, her pearls her teeth, her rubies her 
cheeks, her diamonds her eyes, her cameos her nails, her sap- 
phires her veins. Edith was a model of grace, an image of 
meekness, a token of chastity. She was a lady of refined taste, 
bashful and erect in manners, which erectness extended to her 
morals. Being shy she was not hyp. She was ^twixt heaven 
and earth, neither jovial nor melancholy; she was only as 
pleasant as the midday sun, and patient as the night-time 
slumber. This charming daughter of Eve, was as musical as 
a song and as poetic as a drama, as tender as a rose, bright 
as the day, as benignant as Zenobia. Silence was her pane- 
gyric, smiles her encomium. Her eyes spoke a precious tongue, 
and every movement of her body forfeited a language; her 
every smile was a poem, every glance a paean, every word a 
ditty, every gesture a sonnet, and her every deed an angefls 
chant. A sunny knowledge endowed her mind with light, and 
she read much. 

Edith Bolton’s affection for Morris had about ascended to 
that point where an eruption of words was necessary to dis- 
play that affection. And as her love had slept in the silence 
of her heart a sufficient length of time, she had weaponed her- 
self in her defense to effect an entrance to the seat of his 
affections. One usually lays by the morion of action on the 
day of quietude, but the once venturesome Edith purchased 
the virtue of its service. Yet to capture love with love, the 
Sabbath is the true, convenient time. As an aspirant for his 
love, she would seek to gyve him in the fastness of her bosom. 
When Morris entered the room, Edith knew her tongue must 
do, or success would die, hope flee, and the link of love re- 


183 


main unwelded; so she mustered courage and rent the armor 
of her reticence. Morris, disconsolate, and without otfering 
a word of speech, was passing through the room. Her verve 
kindling, she spoke. 

“Morris, I would converse a while with you,’- she dared, 
speaking sotto voce. 

Morris paused, turned, and scanned her in surprise. A 
tinge of paleness overspread his features as he viewed her 
pallid countenance. 

“What would you have with me?” he inquired. 

“You — you purpose leaving us,” she addressed shyly. 
“What knocks upon your mind and awakes a longing to de- 
liver you away ?” 

“A sharp desire smarts my bosom and induces me to re- 
cover to my home. I am an exile and I have a home.” 

“That, then, unlocks the mystery of your reserve,” she re- 
turned, astonished. “Often have I wondered what might be 
the source of your condition, which is now as clear as day. 
The secret is, I would delight in your remaining ; not have you 
remove from our home.” 

He glanced at the blushing Edith, and was as perplexed as 
she. He removed embarrassed toward the door, seeing the 
intention of her conversation. 

“Stay, Morris, stay! remain!” she pleaded, in a clinging 
tone. “If you move away you will take with you my heart, 
or, at least, bring heaviness and sorrow to my bosom.” 

He hesitated, and retreated a few paces, speaking sorrow- 
fully : “Three years of sadness attracts me hence, and I must 
endeavor to efface further misery !” 

Edith, having previously studied every avenue of approach 
to Morris, was for once strictly earnest. 

“I have tasked myself with courage to challenge you into 
the open plain of love, preferring you to all the world,” she 
said, following his remark. “My heart seems fixed, the path- 
ways of my love converge on you, I trust in you, and I love 


184 


you with my whole soul. Morris, answer me ! Will you not 
convey me into your love?” 

Morris hearkened to her with impatience, but he could be 
no buttress to her desires. 

'‘You request of me a punishment, Edith. I cannot comply 
with your request ! My love is for one absent, and for me to 
discolor that love, by dwelling in the climate of another’s, 
would be a poison to my soul.” 

“But might you not discover a speck of treachery in the 
affairs of her on whom . your eye of thought centers ? So 
know that another in this world is striving to stir up the gift 
of God in you, which is love.” 

“No, Edith, something confirms me that my Mary is firm, 
sadly sad, and true to her promise as God to any of his de- 
crees. Why I lost myself from home, her presence, happiness 
and the world, I shall not divulge. She is my life ; she, whose 
lips are cherries, cheeks roses, tongue truth, love light, life 
heaven, I cannot renounce. No, not even if I must reside in 
grief, torture, or a world as hot as Nebuchednezzar’s furnace.” 

She received that message seriously to her heart ; it collided 
with her lachrymals of hope, and ushered forth tears which 
were visible in the azure of her eyes. His heart was engaged, 
he lov^d another. All was now obvious to her. Hope was 
setting, dismay was rising. Her countenance turned in pallor, 
as every prestige of her blushing color fled. Her voice, as 
she spoke, was as pale as her face. Morris was grieved to see 
her thus, but was tutored to know that an exchange of love 
would be toxicologically harmful. 

“Morris, you are a shining light, which makes the whole 
world bright, and I have developed into the ripeness of love, 
beneath the nurture that your presence gave. I would select 
you rather than a mountain of gold or an ocean of jewels, as 
heaven is engraven on your countenance, and the works there- 
of written in your actions. Grant me your love, and you im- 
part to me a lamp for my soul, a crutch for my peace, and a 
staff for my joy.” 


“My ear hears you, my mind gives you attendance, my heart 
is moved with your supplication, but my soul is debating with 
my pride, my love, my star, my life, my radiant Mary, who 
is awaiting, as my mind recognizes, my long-looked for re- 
turn.” 

Mnemosyne was picturing in his mind, his return to his 
love, and his brain was steering the gondola of thought. 

“You may imagine me free of tongue, Morris, but I control 
my words as love masters my heart.” 

While speaking, her voice presented such an imagery of 
anguish, that her inner feelings Morris could not misquote. 
And also those tiny rivulets began again to stream adown her 
cheeks, a crevasse occurring in the rising channels of her 
passion. Her countenance looked pitiful, valanced with her 
slightly disarranging ringlets of streaming gold. Morris was 
affected as she exposed the genuine impression of her heart 
upon her face. She approched him and reclined herself gently 
on his shoulders, and encircled his neck with caressing arms. 

“Morris, your distance towards me is so cold, and your re- 
spect for her so warm, that I am wounded twice. Die love 
or suffer ; you shall not be crowned !” she hinted to her bosom's 
keeper, who was knocking wildly in her palace of love. Her 
voice was but a murmur and was nearly choking her. “Morris 
is but Morris! O ribbons of my silence, why did I unloose 
you ? A service to the world I cannot be 1 To embower you 
in future love and joy you will not let me !” 

With this she pressed her rosy lips to his twitching cheek, 
and he blushed a lively, splendid, shameful red, as he stood 
so rigidly upright within her arms’ tight clasp. Her kind 
sweetness or sweet kindness was to him only sweet unkindness 
or unkind sweetness. 

“Edith,” he muttered, patiently struggling to release himself 
from an unpleasant situation, “your wayward love, I am un- 
happy to say, is not, and cannot be welcome at this sad, this 
saddest time and moment.” 


i86 


This fragrant plant of patience, so pale, was now disturbed 
by a bruising gale of anxiety. It stained her soul of hope, and 
cut a gash into the heart of her affection, which was letting 
out the life of her success. She did recommend her love, but 
it, as yet, fell short of his acceptance. 

*Tf you renounce me now you curtail many chapters of my 
life,*' she managed to breathe forth. ‘Tn my dreams you em- 
brace my neck with circling arms, and glance upon my face 
with eyes of light. You dare not aspire to the thought of 
leaving me !” 

*T commend you to silence on this subject, for when you 
request my love, you trespass on her love whose love my love 
cannot abandon.** 

This announcement tore the final thread ; it was the climax 
roll of the tongue. And the suffering and repining pleader, the 
beauteous Edith, the gold of love, wavered beneath this jar, 
and, like a severed flower, wilted and fell supine and motion- 
^less, as one helpless, speechless, lifeless; she had fainted in 
his arms, which lipothymy staggered him. She lingered in that 
unpleasant predicament as long as one with temperance might 
tongue the alphabet. But by his presence of mind, and the 
simple restorative of water, he brought her to directly. 

“Where was I? Was I long away? Have you waited for 
me?’* she inquired bewildered. 

Morris, silent, and perceiving her mother approach, took 
his hasty egress, and thus was Edith Bolton disappointed in 
this, the first contest of her love and heart. 

Love is the world’s soul, which, once lost, the world is 
lost. Failing in her coup-de-main, her grace and ease were 
briefly parodied. Edith had appealed to one who possessed 
a marble heart for her. Woman flourishes without love as a 
plant without water. The shadow disappears with the sun, 
the ghost at the scent of the morning air. After the day dies, 
stars take life ; following the death of love all is night. Edith’s 
summer over, winter embraced her ; the battle ended, war, not 


187 


peace. Thus was Edith Bolton, the bashful, the lovely, the 
superb, duly initiated to distress. 

Yet, to Morris, this was a pungent affair, having accom- 
plished a wrong rightly, donating her a future torture, yet re- 
taining his past clinched agreement of the heart. His denial 
of the crown of happiness to her, and his refusal to inaugurate 
her to the office of his love, and seat her in the chair of love’s 
contentment, was a slur to his good nature. Edith had arrayed 
herself in the raiment of language, but was abruptly denuded 
in her enterprise, as the result of failure in a mutual love. 
She had attempted to resort Morris to her company, but lacked 
ability to persuade him to enthrone himself upon her heart’s 
dear seat ; for in the remembrance of his Mary, he had not 
the heart to embrace the bosom of a stranger. So the skylight 
of her heart was darkened. And, like an eagle to his eyrie, 
Morris would take flight to his home, re-enter the household 
of his parents, and regain his olden friendship. So two days 
subsequently, he bid adieu to the lumber magnate and mis- 
sionary minister and family, and began his tedious and tor-* 
tuous pilgrimage, which loses trace and further knowledge of 
Richard Bolton and his family. 


i88 


CHAPTER XXIIL 


A SAD RETURN. 

A stalwart man, with bronzed countenance, a specimen of 
vigor, a picture of health, though with a taint of sadness 
lineated on his features, was traveling the dusty road. A 
large portmanteau, occasionally changed from hand to hand, 
conferred to his arms industry, even as the eager thoughts 
gave their strenuous hire to his mind. As he wore the sem- 
blance of one beset with cares, and replete with the caresses of 
the weather, he must have been inured to the hardships of 
life. His shoes were begrimed with dust, his face seamed with 
sweat, his hands calloused with labor, his clothes furbished 
with wear. From beneath the mask of sadness that deciphered 
his expression, his eyes sparkled with that effulgence of lustre, 
which predict a bursting of the bud of anxiety into the blos- 
som of contentment. This was our hero, Morris Felton. His 
journey was so nearly completed, since forsaking Michigan’s 
gloomy wilderness, that a mile lie before him, such was his 
proximity to his home. 

After two years and a-half of assiduous toil, and more 
than three of homeless turmoil, he was returning to salute his 
unforgotten kindred. He was also reappearing to bid welcome 
to peace and happiness, and farewell to grief and misfortune. 

More than a ternary of years prior to this day, this selfsame 
individual was making his way along this identical road, and 
was now retracing his steps. Then his journey originated, 
he was leaving home; now it would terminate, he was arriv- 
ing home. It was then he glanced not before him, behind him, 
above him, neither to his right hand nor his left, being bowed 


189 


down with a load of sorrow ; now he was supple, and infused 
with the stimulant of hope. 

August was drawing to a close. It was evening, the day 
was far spent, and Morris’s eyes were collecting sights from 
all directions. He viewed the diminished woods, the bared 
hills, the stacked golden grain, the reduced verdant meadows 
and pastures — emerald tables of the bisculus genera — com- 
forting woolly flocks and costly herds, the fields of stalky 
corn performing the evolution of ripeness, and the monotony 
of earth. Scaling the rise of the hill, his home arose before 
his view — an acropolis of admiration. He was all gaze, all 
wonder, all thought, all excitement, all expectation. His eyes 
preceded him, his mind outstripped his sight. Hope was em- 
blazoned on his countenance, which resembled a title-leaf as 
forerunner to the following drama. His heart ascended to 
his throat, and throbbed in his temples, as he approached the 
yard, where he had skipped and sported and gamboled as a 
lad in childish, untroubled glee. 

Once again, by author of his own hand, the gate partly 
gyrated on its hinges, and he stood on the plot sacred to his 
memory. He glanced at the same rosebush, from which, a 
few long short years anterior, in the very bulge of night, he 
had so sadly plucked a rose as a memorial of his home. 

The gloaming had purloined the day of bright illumine, and 
darkness was beginning to strew the shades of night, as our 
weary traveler entered the veranda of the edifice. On the 
porch he paused in fear and dread and scruple. He shud- 
dered lest his father would disclaim him as his own. His 
hope was extinguished from his bosom, and his heart again 
fell into gloominess ; he was a map of mortification, a fac- 
simile of his former self. He was wounded in spirit, he was 
sick in soul, his courage sought its bed of slumber; his pity 
and forgiveness awoke. He flinched beneath the very teeth 
and bite of his heart’s argument, fearing to enter his parent’s 
presence, lest he be unwelcome. 


190 


Finally, he forwarded himself with impatient step toward 
the open door. A feeble light glimmered in the room. Hear- 
ing a voice discoursing, he hesitated. It was his mother’s 
sweet, familiar voice. She spoke in a trembling tone, yet sad, 
indicative of one possessed of carking cares. He was in a 
bath of iciness; his countenance turned lamentably pale, and, 
like his clammy coldness, he could feel his chilly paleness. He 
recognized his brother’s dictation. He endeavored to satisfy 
his ears by gleaning tones articulated by his father, but they 
never came. 

For a few minutes he stood as one almost metamorphosed, 
until, with tottering step, he entered, pacing several strides 
into the room. His mother, who wore the uniform of sorrow 
and white age, was busied in her household duties, while his 
brother, Amos, was reclining in his chair. The mother desisted 
from her labor, and scanned the intruder, who so solemnly 
appeared. She stared in amazement. Who was the stranger 
whose bronzed countenance was so screened by a mask of 
lividness ? He was so very like her husband, the same stature, 
same eyes, same features, same logic of command. Morris 
observed his mother’s embarrassment. “Mother!” he ven- 
tured extremely sad, which pronunciation forced from him an 
advancing step. That talismanic voice unloosened her charm, 
and she paled on the instant. 

“My son I” she exclaimed, springing forward with that step 
and haste peculiar to the abundance of years, and sad son and 
sadder mother were instantly locked in the embrace of for- 
giveness. The tears wasted, the faults redressed, the emo- 
tions allayed, and the brimful bosoms reduced in that warm, 
caloric, that brief embrace, is a task unmeasurable to the 
human mind; the human eyes alone can sound such outpour- 
ings of heavy hearts. 

And what of the dreamer, Amos? Why, he, too, gazed in 
wakeful wonder. Morris extended a cordial hand to him 
also, although it was a painful pleasure for Amos to dis- 


cover his brother at this moment. Morris returning, an 
equal division of the inheritance. 

It required but a brief moment for Morris to relate the his- 
tory of his desertion. The denouement was now unraveled. 
His desire was to attain the most profitable end by the most 
profitable resource ; therefore, for an epoch of three years 
plus three months, he had vanished, and, like the fleeing 
eagle, fish, or soul, left no trail. The shackles of his wooden 
slavery, some months previously, had fallen off, and he trans- 
ported himself from his care and grief into a new existence. 
He again presented himself before the world — the Niagara of 
humanity — to be restored to his former life a renovated man. 

Having related his career, his mother, in a transport of 
emotion, exclaimed : 

“He who gave our son ear to hear, and eye to see, and 
tongue to talk, and mind to think ; he returned him to us 
safely.” 

‘T come to doff my badge of grief and shake my sorrow 
off,” Morris kindly replied. “My soul has dwelt long in agony, 
I would have it now reside in peace. The cruel world has re- 
ceived sufficient toll from me, and now no longer would I 
have it tamper with my happiness.” 

“Henceforth,” returned the mother, “let peace abide within 
the walls of our mansion. We will henceforth dwell together 
in unity?” 

Some time was required for Morris to resubstantiate himself 
properly. His mother had reclaimed him, his brother wel- 
comed him, as he supposed, favorably. He yearned to do 
reverence to his father, and by removing the partition of dis- 
similitude, unite themselves in the house of peace. He was 
desirous of meeting his parent promptly. As he made mani- 
fest his earnestness to meet his father, the mother’s coun- 
tenance changed perceptibly. She was interrupted by the wet 
language of her eyes. She related the doleful information. 
Morris was for a few moments bewildered ; he became sud- 


192 


denly dizzy, reeled, with a whirlwind of frenzy rushing through 
his brain, a cataract of misery gushing through the alleys of 
his system. He was completely dazed. He appeared flighty, 
lost in a jungle of confusions, a Ganges of turbulence roaring 
in his head. 

Amos was too severely shocked for speech; his tongue lie 
in a snare of suspense, his mind in a trapan of malice. His 
brother entering the door, he descried half his wealth develop 
wings, and, like a phoenix, soar aloft from its treasured nest. 
At his leisure, the blowsy Amos would dream of mountains of 
gold. His mind burned at the thought of mammon, his eyes 
dilated at the sight of wealth, his palms itched for the weight 
of gold, his pleasure fattened at the use of money, his pockets 
grinned at the rattle of cash, his portemonnaie gnawed in its 
appetite for opulence; the whole man clamored for the lucre. 
And now amidst his affluent revery, his blissful ride in chariots 
of gold, his expected coffers were capsized by a sudden jolt. 
His crescive air-castles were abruptly reduced, and his conceit 
likewise. Almost could he have wept for continents of wealth 
to acquire, as Alexander, owing to a dearth of world’s to 
conquer. Crestfallen, he retired. 

“Why does Amos wear such a gloomy countenance, 
and thus remove himself so early?” Morris asked. 

“Toil was his expense of spirits this day,” responded the 
mother. “He was preparing the soil to a condition favorable 
for the sowing of the wheat.” 

Morris accepted the statement. Impatient to sound another 
cord, his mind sighted the heaven of his palliative. In the 
zenith of his thoughts gleamed a star more enchanting than 
Galilean star. He had not heard quoted yet the theme of 
Mary Ogden’s love. He craved and urged information from 
his mother. 

“A fortnight since Mary presented us a visit,” his mother 
began, Morris fascinated in attention. “She appeared bright- 
er than at any period during the interval of your seclusion. 


7 


193 


Her eyes, so long painted by the hand of grief, seemed to have 
obtained a score of tongues, and spoke more forcible than the 
mellow tones that issued from between her lips. Your re- 
moval from her presence was as the disappearance of the sun ; 
she could scarce retain her life within her breast, the dark 
coldness of sorrow wintering her world. Despair has caused 
a revolution in her appearance. Perhaps to you now she 
would a stranger seem ! Poor girl ! Her change is so com- 
plete. She is the holy flower of your bosom, and, though 
faded, the spice of love is all the keener. Her quotations of 
_your love were as pathetic as an angel’s plea. Her prayers 
ascended in behalf of your return. All was night wherein she 
lived, until one special hour when the halo of a dream il- 
lumined her unquiet slumber. Her dream she left with me. 
Meantime, the door of hope, as she expresses it, has opened. 
It was a lengthy dream. I will her dream abridge. She per- 
ceived you, her heart’s charm, her life’s heaven, her own 
Morris, arrive at home. You re-occupied your former place, 
crowned with joy, garlanded with glory, wreathed with love, 
jeweled with contentment. She saw you slightly altered in 
countenance, several shades more woeful. The diminished 
circle of your friends opened their kind hearts to welcome 
you. Again you gained access within her sphere to comfort 
her and to be comforted. You were soon joined as one, 
bandaged with the vows of love, and a delightful life of bird- 
like bliss presaged to be your destiny. So you apprehend, 
Morris, her love for you shines bright as heaven’s own light, 
though her own heart, itself a ruddy soul^ is veiled in grief.” 

Morris was absorbed in his mother’s recital. His heart 
ventured to beat easier after being notified of Mary’s faithful- 
ness. 

“Dreams are merely visions,” he. followed, pleased. “How- 
ever, this is an instance wherein a dream has been almost 
wholly fulfilled.” 

Morris was much fatigued and was longing for repose. He 


194 


took an orderly “good-night” of his mother, and ascended the 
stairs. His feet had not trod those steps for, it seemed to him, 
an age — a forlorn and rancid age. Before retiring, his ac- 
customed knees bent, and he sank in apropos aptness, and his 
orisons rose through thought and light; his benisons were of- 
fered to Him who restored him safely to his home — the germ 
of his infancy, the embryo of his manhood. 

It was early when he awoke. The sun was shining brightly, 
the morning was lovely, the birds were singing sweetly. The 
sky was clear as a sea of cerulean ice in its enamel, and the 
scent of autumn was in the atmosphere — an exudation of per- 
fumes. It was the thankful Sabbath. He arose, dressed, de- 
scended the stairs, and strolled a while leisurely in the bracing 
air. 

During the prime of the forenoon he entered the cemetery, 
a mile and a-half distant from his home. His head was bowed, 
and his countenance wore the impress of reverence. He ap- 
proached a mound of earth that lacked a density of verdure ; a 
few balmy flowers adorned this peaceful knoll. It was his 
father’s sepulchre. 

A tide of compassion rose from his emotion, and he in- 
clined forward, kneeling on the grave, and poured out such a 
stream of homage from his heart, and flood of tears from his 
eyes, that he baptized the terrene shroud of the unav^kened 
sleeper beneath. That done, he rose and stood in silence by the 
cenotaph, and perused it. It was a befitting day and hour for 
this solemn, this divine occasion. Nature herself was as silent 
and serious as this revered necropolis. Not a sound disturbed 
the atmosphere overhead; not a murmur emerged from the 
chambers beneath. He began to wander through this holy 
square^ among the sacred tombs. He looked with awe and re- 
spect upon the unique monuments — marble tongues of the 
voiceless dead — and the epitaphs — the divine language of the 
hallowed mold. His price of tears was his ode, his touch of 
pity his elegy for his father’s tabernacle. His honor com- 


195 


pleted, he egressed from man’s supernal area, and God’s 
eternal acre. 

He walked home beneath the pelting noonday sun in dawn- 
ing ecstasy. His adoration toward his parent’s memory was 
a shelter to his heart. His cloudy mind was clearing, his 
heavy heart was lightening, his cramped soul was expanding. 
He expected to be again rejuvenated to joy, and thought 
sumptuously of Mary. 

“Her beauty of face and warmth of heart is my life’s sun, 
without which I continue to be overhung with the shades of 
night. She is a sweet plant endowed with a noble soul ; she is 
an earthly angel. I am the volume from which her emotion 
received its educated love. Her knowledge I find has not de- 
serted her.” 

He reached home and the sun stood in the meridian. In the 
afternoon he purposed to visit Mary, his firm acquaintance in 
love, his true soul of life, and seek to counteract the poison of 
his existence. 


196 


. CHAPTER XXIV. 


CLEFT HEARTS AGAIN MADE WHOLE. 

Morris was re-instated as the palm of his home, the crown 
of his province, and the restored pride of his mother’s heart. 
His filial love he had showered with tears of consolation upon 
his father’s cheerless grave. He was slowly shuffling off his 
coil of sorrow. His mind, too, in the eve of this day’s noon, 
having paid tribute to his parent’s memory, reverted to Mary, 
his iridescent sphere of light. He possessed the delightful 
contents of her dream — the luxury of her hope. Love, the 
blossom of the human plant, faded not in her possession, nor 
withered in her heart. 

The ruddy orb had already passed meridian, when Morris 
was proceding towards the house of her his fancy carried. He 
resolved to meet her early and apprise her of his return. His 
love — that fulcrum whereon rested the lever of happiness — 
was sustaining his weight of thought, while his heart — the 
Archimedes of mechanism — was calculating the moving of 
the world of joy. 

This day would constitute the turning tide in the affairs and 
fortune of his life. So with revery, he arrived, perhaps a 
stranger within her gates, where his mind for several years 
had dwelt. His heart had also been there; now, he himself 
was present once again. He was figuring the effect his sud- 
den disclosure would produce upon the dearest part of him- 
self — his sorrow-wasted Mary. Like a chevalier, he ap- 
proached the door, which was open. Mrs. Ogden was alone, 
and, perceiving Morris, drawled out: 

'‘Morris Felton, and still in life !” 


197 


A few remarks passing between them, Mrs. Ogden strided 
to the stairway and requested Mary’s presence. 

“Mary, come, your presence here is needed!” 

On this day Mary was in one of her strains of reflection, 
regardless of her glimpse of future promise, and a bitter feud 
was in progress with the peaceful stream flowing through her 
heart. She was pensive, and the day to her was dim. Her 
cheerlessness was seeking to devour her; it was a cannibal 
preying upon her wasted anatomy. It was the continuance 
of her grief — base utensil of appetite — that reduced her fine 
rotundity. Her mind at the time was associating the past, 
present, and the future, which tenses she was weaving into 
a single fabric. “Will my dream be fulfilled? Will he ever 
return? He may return soon, I am looking for him. His 
presence may be near at this very moment !” Her love for him 
had not diminished, it might have been a wasted love. She 
could not have told. 

When love is lost the heart is wrecked, the world is dead; 
one sees no roses, birds, stars, people; one perceives not the 
gilded sunrise, the mellow moonshine, the sportive clouds, the 
stately trees, the curved arch of heaven. One’s eyes are trip- 
ped by sorrow’s nascent passions. Neither does one hear the 
lark caroling, the zephyrs serenading, the rills gurgling, the 
leaves whispering, the children prattling, the music of the 
spheres. One’s ears are plugged by grief’s emotions. One is 
paralyzed to all sights and sounds. 

It was in the midst of one of these meditations that Mary 
responded to the summons of her mother. She had received 
the impress of voices speaking, but her mind was engaged, 
and on her part the conversation fell in disregard. All was 
hushed in the room beneath, and Morris heard footsteps. 
Mary was descending the stairs. His heart fluttered as he 
heard again the thrilling tread of her approaching steps. Tiny 
waves of paleness began to steal over his countenance, and 
large circles of coldness to creep down his body in gyrations. 
She was unmindful of the presence of a stranger. 

198 


The door opened ; Mary appeared. She paused, grew on the 
instant pale, giddied with acute emotion, the light having 
wasted from her eyes. 

“Morris \” she gasped, springing forward and reeled top- 
pling in his arms. 

It was almost four months previously that a burden, similar 
to the one he now supported, was clinging to those arms. But 
Mary had almost fainted, being on the verge of a swoon. But 
she soon rallied from her semi-syncope, which was a sickness 
caused by sudden joy, and once again her lover’s company was 
a nurse to her delight. 

“I have returned, Mary, to reclaim your hand and heart, to 
retrieve your soul and love.” 

These were his words of welcome to her. 

“Dry your eyes, Mary, as tears interfere with vision, and 
tarnish your cheeks,” her mother interposed. 

“Morris, I welcome you with a loving shower of tears and 
an overflow of my heart’s best greeting. I take you gladly to 
my bosom,” Mary faintly said. 

“My sojourn was to me an age, Mary, my punishment 
severe. The wild torrent of the occasion enforced me to a 
clime more distant than I was want to be removed. Mary, I 
have learned all, which is all too much, and much too much. 
Your battle with this disaster was as desperate as mine.” 

“You see a dreadful change has come upon my daughter,” 
said Mrs. Ogden. “You bring new vivacity to her sad, sick 
soul.” 

Morris was cognizant of Mary’s plight ere he entered her 
home. His mother had acquainted him thereon, yet she was 
farther on her journey than he apprehended. She was not the 
merry, lovely, jovial, dulcet, contented Mary of former time, 
with rosy, blushing countenance ; she was the sad, forlorn, woe- 
ful, pensive, meditative Mary, with pale, emaciated features. 
Considering this transition in her condition, she retained her 
beauty. 


199 


“Yes, Morris, you have released my mind from prison, my 
life from cruel bondage. You are my just deliverer.’^ 

Morris was rejoiced over the loyalty of her love, which was 
flavored with a true color, and seasoned with the salt of con- 
tinuity. Neither of their loves waxed cold, and their words 
of faith that intermingled over three years anterior, were 
words coupled to truthfulness, hooped in the golden ligaments 
of a golden trust. Her votary and his were safely kept; they 
were diamonds of their tongues enshrined in the diadems of 
their hearts. They loved with all their mind, and with all their 
heart, and with all their soul, and with all their strength, be- 
ing as true as sun to day. 

“Let us forget the mischief, Mary, that is past and gone. 
We will strengthen our loves and lives, and make our loves 
doubly, and, if possible, trebly, strong, increase our hearts 
many times in peace.” 

“This day is the golden leaf in the calendar of my life,” 
followed Mary. “Prayer would not comfort me, nor put the 
oil of solace in my heart, but the balm of your society assuages 
me abundantly. You are the emperor and aurora as ruler of 
my bosom. Yet you should not have remained in the darkness 
of the world so long an era.” 

“I underwent exile for your love. Greater love than that 
does no man possess. But we will not converse upon so sad 
an incident.” 

“You bring my daughter the wages of health, the price of 
life,” suggested Mrs. Ogden. “She begins to unlace her grief 
already.” 

“Mary, let us commend ourselves to the air, which, though 
warm, will not interfere with the sister summer in our 
bosoms,” solicited Morris. “I invite you to join in a stroll to 
my home. We can return by moonlight.” 

It was agreed upon, and shortly after three, Morris and 
Mary, in mingled thought and lov.e, were proceeding toward 
the former’s place of residence. They were re-instated on the 


200 


track of delight and trudging on to peace. The anthems of 
praise, the zephyrs of music, the breezes of song and the 
vespers of idyllic joy once again began to surround them. 

Mrs. Ogden was standing beneath the threshold of her 
mansion in a surge of felicity, and. pursued the retreating, lov- 
ing couple with her eyes. She perceived the proem of her 
daughter’s re-established rapture and delight. Her daughter’s 
disturbance, at Morris’s desertion on that dreadful night, had 
also unknit her calm; but as she now watched the tide of 
peace revive upon her countenance, so long barren by the ebb 
of joy, her mind and heart were again moulded to bright har- 
mony. Her cheer was vast, her pleasure immense; her joy 
was a Babel rising. 

Neither Morris Felton nor Mary Ogden were extravagant 
in speech, yet they were both cheerful, candid, and gentle any- 
where and everywhere. Their drift of silence was not a dis- 
tant coldness, but a golden warmth. They were each other’s 
music. 

“It is like to me now as if heaven has fledged a new world, 
convinced by the freshness and sweetness of the earth.” Mary 
began after they had egressed from the yard. “The torpid 
time instinctively new life has taken, and is renewed. My 
deceased happiness, like a prostrate Lazarus, has sprung to 
life at the touch of your presence.” 

In reality, it was a decaying summer’s day. . Lost happi- 
ness discovered, recognizes beauty in the dispersion of the 
beautiful ; therefore, to Mary, the world seemed gay, glorious, 
sublime. She was again girded with gladness, making true 
the prophecy of her dream. 

“I am delighted, Mary, to notice your ecstasy return with 
my return. May the pulses of our joy make music delightful 
as the love song of birds !” 

“Or the murmur of the brooklet !” she annexed. 

A faint note of laughter escaped her here. It was the first 
real pure laugh — a laugh journeying from the heart — for sev- 
eral years. 


201 


“Morris, ’’ she gently asked, “relate briefly a history of your 
sojourn abroad. What adventures you embraced! But no! 
we will take a different profit of our time. Your being 
with me is adequate, because I love to enjoy your beauty and 
warmth of heart.” 

But Morris pictured to her the painful existence of his 
exile. It was a lamentable tale — a jeremiade without ridi- 
cule — and propounded in an Othello-like manner. Her sym- 
pathy grew radiant as he proceeded, and her heart partook 
freely of the nature of his voice. As he completed, she re- 
marked in a mood more luminous than gay : 

“The past past, we will not treasure those sad events, nor 
will we nurse those shadows of our lives. Let us turn to the 
sunshine, the light, the life of peace, the thoughts of love, the 
hope of happy days in a tranquil future.” 

“Mary, you think wise marvellously, and speak marvellous 
wisely. We will be born again. Let the new dawn arise.” 

These two seemed to be transfused with the spirit of the 
atmosphere. The warmth, the brightness, the fair brow of 
heaven, the peaceful wold feebly tickled by warbling birds, 
were imaged on their countenances and felt within their 
bosoms. One would have supposed they had discovered an 
Esculapian curative. Thus it is when eye meets eye, heart 
measures heart, and soul soul subdues. Love is the 
music of the soul. Their fresh souls sang a gleeful 
rapture. Their joy and love knew no bounds, as they were 
in the paroxysm of rejoicing — linked in the divine embrace 
of happiness. From the gulch of heaviness they had arisen 
to the apogee of glee, where that light of glee effaced the night 
of sorrow. 

The conversation continued as they progressed. They had 
exchanged thoughts, sentiments, and little gems of love, and 
soldered their souls together. In truth, the spice, the contents, 
the very substance of their hearts so mingled in the crucible 
of love that their sentiments were as unity. For an epoch they 


202 


had subsisted on the empty side of life, the edge of joy, the 
outside of contentment, the north side of warmth. 

They had almost arrived at their joyous walk’s end. 

The heat increased, and was more burdensome than they 
had supposed. It was, in fact, one of those quiet, sultry, for- 
lorn Sabbath afternoons that creep over the landscape, and 
render unto the earth a bewitching influence. Rain for divers 
days had not allayed the parched soil, and the fumid earth 
reflected a dazzling, furnace-like heat. The dust made walk- 
ing unpleasant. The tranquillity was permeated by the con- 
stant buzz of bees about the drooping flowers. The plants, 
leaves, flowers, vines, tussocks, — all forms of vegetation — 
were smitten with the scorching blaze. The birds were suffer- 
ing, their pigmy bills ajar and tiny throats swelling, while 
the panting herds had levied on localities beneath the shade 
of trees. The twitter of the rufous-throated, spike-tailed, 
swift-winged swallows was also heard as they skimmed the 
dizzy height. The twang of the throaty frog resounded from 
the adjacent pond as if he fain would mock the air. And 
there, too, an armada of geese were sailing, and a squadron 
of ducks were paddling — a mimic feathered navy. 

Through this warmth Morris and Mary had attained their 
goal, and had entered beneath the ceiling of Morris’s home. 
The latter part of the afternoon was assisted toward evening 
with cheerful conversation, Mrs. Felton kindly participating 
in the patient colloquy. The kind old lady perceived Mary 
again betrothed to gladness, sweetened with the myrrh of 
peace, and bathed in the borax of smiles. She was happy to 
see her sorrow dissipated, as she was again made whole. 

Soon the sun was setting, and the suave sea of the horizon 
was gilded with a ruddy glow. The atmosphere was resonant 
with the sonorous notes of insects, animated by the coolness 
of the gathering twilight. The robin redbreast — happy mon- 
arch of the evening — was gayly piping his sonatas, and the 
merry brown thrush — weird enchanter of the yodel — was mer- 


203 


rily warbling his roundelays. At this hour, our two com- 
panions were again performing the feat of pedestrianism, for 
Morris was escorting Mary home. Twilight fell, which en- 
abled the queen of night to illuminate her candles. The Hes- 
perian moon, like an eye of night, followed the Levantine sun, 
and the darkness began to pale. 

They entered the gate at Mary’s home, and, approaching 
the porch, they hesitated, and were soon engrossed in the 
tenderest conference. “Mary,” he said, after a period of 
conversation had drifted by,” “we have just concluded a 
limited stroll ; were it not best for us to enter on that pilgrim- 
age which continues through our life?” 

“I do not understand you quite,” she responded meekly. 

“A few years since, I inquired for your hand in companion- 
ship, your heart in love. To-day I seek that same hand in 
betrothment, that same heart in unity. I desire to possess 
you as my own, my heart’s purer heart, the wife of my 
bosom.” 

She reclined toward him and with affecting arms encircled 
his neck, saying: “I have searched you and I know your 
heart ," I have tried you and I know your thoughts ; I have 
perused you and I know your love; I have heard you and I 
know your honesty. How can I deny you, trusting as I do in 
you.” 

“Speak the word briefly, Mary, will you put yourself in my 
protection ?” 

Her countenance was luminous as the moon ; moonlight was 
the mirror of her humor. 

“To me, Morris, you are the elixir of life. I consecrate to 
you my heart and soul.” 

Morris glanced upward at the stars to ascertain if, verily, 
it was not a dream, and found it actual ; no thaumaturgy had 
been practiced. 

“Mary, with your consent, we will have the nuptial knot 
bound within the limit of a month, and immediately on the 


204 


morrow will I prepare a place in our residence for you and 
your devoted mother.” 

They separated early in the evening and were very happy. 
Mary had hoped continually that Morris would return. And 
now the wine of satisfaction was produced from the water of 
discontent. Morris was likewise a bettered man. He had re- 
gained his native strata. With Mary he formerly negotiated 
with the myrtle ; with his father he retaliated with the laurel ; 
with himself he contemplated with the willow ; with his mother 
he congratulated with the palm ; with his friends he now sup- 
plicated with the olive ; with his affianced he proposed sub- 
sequently to commune with the mistletoe. He journeyed 
home in bliss. He felt like one rambling through Daphnian 
groves, or traversing Elysian fields. He was the son of truth- 
fulness, she the moon of faithfulness ; she was the Phoebe of 
this Phoebus. His love for his love was a faithful love, and 
his love’s love for her love was also a true love. 

Ere another hexahemeron had wasted, his companion, as he 
foresaw, would be sheltered beneath his mother’s roof. So 
the following Thursday, Mary Ogden and her mother were 
transferred to the Felton domicile, which was to become their 
home henceforth. 

Aleantime, let us consider the workings of Morris’s brother, 
Amos. 


205 


CHAPTER XXV. 


ENDED ALMOST A TRAGEDY. 

Morris brought with, his return, a touch of discomfort to 
his brother’s spirits, which hung a cloud upon his countenance, 
and even checked the progress of his waywardness. For a 
glorious period he was dreaming of the coffers of the Orient, 
the wealth of Ophir, the treasures of the Incas, the riches of 
the Montezumas, and the opulence of the El dorados. But now 
since he descried his brother re-appear, he was another than 
himself ; his carousals were dressed in . better shape. He 
veered, and the clear sky of joy became the clouded pit of 
doom. So the two brothers were weighed in the balance of 
future promise, or unpromise, dangling in the scales of life. 
Amos was descending, Morris was ascending. The dawn of 
the one signified the dusk of the other. The larger portion 
of the jocose brother’s heart followed the fleeing half of the 
inheritance that eluded him, and nourished the devout brother’s 
right of heirship. This was the cause of his confusion, which 
was unknown to the household. 

Two weeks had passed and the Saturday was cool, cloudy, 
damp. The foul clouds canopied Amos Felton, and the wild 
flood of passion was surging within him. His footsteps were 
conveying him to the borough; his wounded peace wiped the 
pleasure from his mind, and effaced the love from his heart. 
This gay Lothario who had lived in deepest pleasure, and tar- 
ried long at the wine, was now saddened and reduced to total • 
abstinence by his brother’s return, which was more effectual 
in purging away his liquor habit than any “gold cure.” As 
with drink, he thought no more of love. Often was he absent 
from the farm, which was, undoubtedly, proper, Morris sup- 

206 


plying his position. Time became oppressive to him. For- 
merly, where the gay time was brief, it now moved with the 
dial’s point. 

He entered the village, and ere many minutes more elapsed, 
he perceived a disquieted female approach him. He en- 
deavored to evade her, but she hastened. This wa^ Ruth May- 
bloom, the gay young life he had turned to gloom. 

“Amos Felton, why seek you to elude me? Why tarry you 
for such a length of time outside of my company? For three 
weeks, which three ages are to me, you have neglected me, 
and denied me your cheer. Remain and unfold yourself!”^ 

As his temper was not in its usual vein, he could not greet 
her with the ordinary sunshine of his manner, but wore a 
worried look, and proved frigid as a polar bear. Yet he 
recognized the condition into which this weak, frail vestal had 
condescended. 

“I am unyoked from all enjoyment,” he returned feebly, 
“and unable to do you justice more.” 

“You speak so to me! You, Amos Felton! My all in all! 
Why do you separate the milk from your kindness, and the 
honey from your language? Has your love coagulated in 
your bosom that you discontinue to sit in my affection ? Have 
I offended you ?” 

This disciple of diversion, servant of wealth, this froward 
romping, rasping slave of lust to all that feeds the pleasures of 
this life, was as the northern pole to her. 

“I had rather you would withdraw,” he followed her re- 
marks. “You annoy me.” 

“Amos, you cannot retrace your journey on my love.” 

“Give yourself no worry,” he said consolingly. “My trouble 
may dispense to nought like a circle in water, or smoke in air.” 
She was powerless to demephitize the air of his deportment. 

“Amos, you bestow upon me stern neglect not customary 
with your force of habit. Speak with a tongue of love; do 
not totally deprive me of my happiness. Signify by deed or 
show or sign some tender spark of feeling.” 

207 


“Ruth, were I able to expunge my vexation I would do so 
willingly, but while I am as I am, living as I now live, with 
such trouble as my trouble is, my unsettled mind cannot polish 
back your normal temper. We are best apart.” 

Having thus spoken, he began to move from her presence, 
as some passers-by had noticed them. He was revolving in 
the maelstrom of confusion, and the insolence of his conduct 
was a paradox to Ruth. As he proceeded to retreat from her, 
she hastily seized his arm. 

“Stay!” she madly urged, “you fulfill your duty. Why not 
weigh this cause correctly, and not falsely lose your confidence 
in me ?” 

“It is your tongue and not your looks that increases my 
punishment,” he interfered, provoked at her tedious harangue. 
“Go to now, and let me ruminate upon my revery.” He essayed 
to escape from her a second time. She imagined his neglect 
would signify for her an utter ruin; she fancied him a vile 
wretch of foul duplicity — a Janus-faced lover. She followed 
him, speaking: 

“Have I so chased the beauty from your countenance, the 
pleasure from your mind, and the sympathy from your heart? 
Did I expose that badge of sorrow in your eyes ? Open your 
lips and pour an answer out ?” 

He made a desperate effort to separate from her and he 
succeeded. He departed from her straight and went straight 
home. 

Unhappy Ruth was sadly worsted, as his rosewater love, 
as she now suspected, had evaporated. Thus this queen of 
smiles and heroine of laughter, conceived her Amos with a 
heart of marble, a conscience of vapor, a soul of ebony. Her 
countenance was sweltering in tears. She had consulted 
Amos, the conclusion was vexing. She could not ascertain 
the cause of his unkindness. Her mind was battling with 
anxiety, her sight riveted to her thoughts, and her breast 
squeezed with grief. Presently she commanded her foot- 
steps. As Amos Felton would not console her heart, to sorrow 

208 


she bequeathed it. She wended her way home with doleful 
lisping in her soul and gnarling sorrow in her heart. She ar- 
rived home at last, sad, dejected, ill-tempered, heart-broken. 

Amos was in a frame of mind no less serious, as he was be- 
wildered and peevish as a wasp. 

Usually he considered it a treat, to meet this Ruth, a picture 
for the eye, a morsel for the breast, an image for his affec- 
tions. He had seen her a sprite — a naiad wreathed with an 
aureole of splendor. But as his deportment was, the sore 
pleading of this child of misfortune stung his maimed spirit. 
His journey home was accompanied with much affliction. 

The ensuing night two persons were compelled to undergo 
a sleepless torture, though from a dissimilar standard of un- 
happiness; she from the wealth of love, he from the love of 
wealth. Thus two more weeks capitulated to time, and the 
clouded sky of these beings grew darker, blacker, and obscured 
all future promise, all germs of hope. Hope ! For what could 
they hope ? She for the restoration of her heart to the throne 
of love; he for the recovery of his brother’s portion of in- 
heritance, that formerly he himself possessed. His hope of 
success was impossible, and he was destined not to still, so 
soon the sadness of his heart; hers was probable, and she 
hoped to be again bedecked with the dew of favor. 

Ruth would sit for hours together in deliberation. Day 
after day she would limp about in pensive uncertainty. She 
had wasted many days — days dull and dark and dead to her — 
with an irritable sorrow. Though once during this period she 
had determined to a^ain meet Amos Felton. So wandering 
forth, she succeeded in covering half the distance of her jour- 
ney, when, weakened in the hope of securing his devotion, 
she lay by the wayside and debated with her soul. This con- 
cluded, she retraced her steps. Some days afterward, she 
repeated her attempt with similar success, but after several 
days she was desperately resolved, as a final stroke, to pene- 
trate his bosom with the dirk of savage pleading. Therefore, 
on the following sacred day — the Lord’s souvenir day — she 

209 


was on a march to charge an assault in the battle of love. 
This was her final raid. She purposed to pluck the cold plume 
of neglect from this silenced lad. On this day she was strong 
— like a vexed pygmy lioness. As chance occurred, Amos was 
in the orchard at his home, and was not observed by a single 
soul when Ruth approached him from the adjoining field. She 
had clandestinely succeeded in arriving there, and drew nigh 
ere Amos was impressed of her presence. 

^To-day I come to seek redress for my grievances,” she 
began with a temper sharpened pungently. “Look at me. I 
am yet trig with the true color of love — and sorrow, too.” 

A frown was manifest upon his brow. 

“You should not have come to-day,” he said. “You have 
not the strength to bend my humor.” 

“Can I not smooth that humor with a few kind words? I 
would anoint you with my true love tears to render you 
pervious to my affection. Amos, look with kindness upon me, 
as you possess the only sunshine which can thaw the winter 
of my gloom.” 

His own trouble employed his own thoughts, so he made no 
. rejoinder. 

“Can you not spend one little word of love? Only do not 
secede from my love, for I am incompetent to suffer your 
denial. If you are dumb your are not also deaf. O, how I 
would love to phlebotomize from you the drops of language 
in return I gave you, and that you now hold in your posses- 
sion. If your heart be cast of iron, why not encase it in a 
copper pericardium? If you could recognize yourself as I 
you see, you might judge differently of this our love.” 

She was growing visibly excited and earnest in speech. She 
was in the throes of anguish ; her sentences were much dis- 
ordered and fell at random. 

“My sorrow is so great I cannot behold you candidly,” he 
replied. “My life’s reservoir is so topful of sadness, that it 
essays to burst asunder the sursingle of preservation. Being 
filled with the hyssop of affliction, how can you phlebotomize 


210 


from me, as you say, the wine of word’s affection? As no 
happiness resides in my heart, you can obtain no security of 
peace here. Quit my presence, and seek me no more.” 

“Can you not bandage this broken joint of love? Unfold 
some cause why you desert me so? Why do you continually 
hold me on the north side of your affection? Have you for- 
gotten your promise, when you placed yourself within the 
boundary of my love and name? Your deportment is a blister 
on the epidermis of my life. I have invested my mind, heart 
and soul in you, only to lose all, for you deny the welcome 
even of my presence.” 

He remained unmoved, awake, yet sleeping. She could 
not distil a word of consolation from him, he was so like a 
statue cut in granite. She was a Delilah plotting to shear him 
of his locks of despondency, even a Xantippe pouring the water 
of distress upon his head, a Hagar praying to unlock his heart 
of adamant to her affliction. Her jetty eyes snapped in anger 
as she again resumed in his silence: 

“What has occurred to cause you to remain outside my reach 
of love? Your words were as soft as butter, as smooth as oil, 
but now your actions are to me like swords of mustard. My 
meditation upon you is sweet, but my disappointment bitter. 
Speak your reason why you fail to deliver me from this bond- 
age. What has hardened your heart? Tell me, you, the light 
of my eyes, the star of my heart, the glass of my soul; receive 
me !” 

This vivified him. 

“You interfere too grossly with my injured mood of mind, 
and bruised poise of peace. For the present we will separate. 
Go ! Give me to silence and to solitude !” 

Ruth looked sublime. She stood there before this Amos 
very much as on a certain night in early spring; before her 
peerless Amos, whose mandates she obeyed, only then she was 
mellow with the softness of joy, now callous with the hardness 
of anger. She was wild, she was impassionate, she was im- 
placable. 


2II 


“Amos Felton, break me not asunder with unfavored words ! 
You kiss my ear with bitter mouth! You disdain my harping 
on the topic of my misery, but I temper my discourse as medi- 
cine to suit the malady of my case. Your hard heart can re- 
ceive no injury from my tongue, for I cannot speak with lan- 
guage wild enough. Would God furnished me the power! 
You are a wretch, a scamp, a hollow, hare-brained ingrate, 
a marble-breasted deceiver, a wrecker of souls. Your false 
and shallow love was like a bubble in the brook, a meteor, a 
streak of lightning, which was one second and ceased to be 
the next. I should in this hour be cushioned on the pillow of 
your bosom, so my aching head its peace could find, just like 
as of yore. But your mouth is a mouth of falsehood — an 
orifice of guile; your tongue is as sharp as a serpent’s fang — 
a prod to ruin and death. You have excerpted the honey from 
my bud of patience, and excited the ferment of my rage. All 
along the past your sleek and heinous words, like poison, 
crept into my ears. Your small, stupid, crooked, squinted, 
sleazy, ephemeron love — who left it hence? Look upon me, 
I am alone! You cannot content me now by undoing what 
you have done ! Such oblique and brainless love a savage 
can possess, and even out-afifection. You were once a friend 
to me, though you now detest me. You had assumed so false 
a shape, that the blackness of your deeds did counterfeit the 
very Prince of Darkness, and now your cold silence and re- 
serve is the dirge of Igve. You have arms, but they confer 
me no caresses ; eyes, but they impart me no light ; ears, but 
they give me no attention ; a heart, but its blossoms of love 
grant me no fragrance; a soul, but its dead ecstacy emits no 
pity ; a life, but its petrified pleasure surrounds me with never 
a circle of cheer.” 

Her speaking ceased, the oil of ideas in the lamp of lan- 
guage subsiding. She had elucidated the transcript of her 
brain, which was not merely words, but matter from the 
heart. She was also cracking her voice with sobs dry and 
harsh, and tears, hot, gushing tears, strangled all further 


212 


speech, knowing as she did that the traffic of their hearts had 
terminated. She was the satellite of this bleared planet, and 
was eclipsed. 

The skirmish of anger that ensued in this meeting inflicted 
a new bruise in Amos’s bosom. He aroused himself from his 
stupor like a sleeping lion, and instantly the cruel fierceness of 
a tiger crept into his dormant nerves. Something was work- 
ing in his brain like a hot Irish toddy. His pale and sullen 
countenance flushed and puifed and swelled like an adder ; his 
eyes dilated and gleamed and repelled like a basilisk; his 
scarlet neck expanded and throbbed and glistened like a 
cobra ; and his twitching and trembling lips parted, his mouth 
opened, his tongue to motion did commend itself, and from 
his gasping throat there issued shrieking falsetto sounds. 

“If you make me mad you’ll make me mad, and if you 
make me mad you’ll make me very mad. You have made me 
mad! You have made me sick! You have made me wild! 
You have made me vicious !” and unsheathing from its lurk- 
ing sleep a ferocious looking knife, uncasing its fierce blade, 
and flourishing it maniacally, he muttered: “Leave instantly, 
or I will plunge this fatal point deep into my heart.” 

She recoiled terror-stricken. She detected the maniacal 
pinch and glister of his physiognomy. “Maniac!” flashed 
across her mind. The crushed Ruth retreated to a safer and 
more respectful distance. 

“Your language and your mood of lunacy send me home,” 
she pursued, as a departing word. 

She retired sadder, gloomier, sicklier than she had ever 
been before. Frustrated in her object, she permitted him to 
remain a prey to his delirium. During her conference in this 
drama, an infinite variety of action had escaped her, reveal- 
ing a kaleidoscope of human qualities, as her deportment was 
a modicum of the mingled traits of Venus, Juliet, Cleopatra, 
Elizabeth, and the Queen of Sheba. Her homeward journey 
was molested by a hurricane of poignant inward blasts. 


213 


CHAPTER XXVL 


'"brimful of sorrow and dismay/" 

As Ruth separated from this sulky lad, she was not pur'^ncd 
by his savage eyes. He remained stationed to the earth, a 
bulk of grief, while his eyes were fastened to the surface of 
verdure, and his features were as the expression of a Sphinx. 
Had one observed him previously he would have imagined 
him a demon under an attack of St. Vitus" dance, or some- 
thing worse ; but in his doltish mood he would have pro- 
nounced him a figure statued in stone, instead of like Lot’s 
wife, a pillar of salt. 

This Adonis was so sad, and saw through his glass darkly. 
Presently he shook off his stupor, and addressed himself to 
motion slowly. He crept out of his lethargy like bruin from 
his hibernal sleep. As he seemingly awoke, his eye fell upon 
the blade that glistened in his hand. He retreated farther 
into the orchard, where the cumbersome roof almost sequester- 
ed him. Divesting his bosom of a portion of its vesture, he 
clutched his weapon with a Titanic grasp, slowly stretched 
his arm out to its utmost tension, when, in which climax, this 
Colossus of grief relinquished his strain and allowed his Van- 
dalic arm forfeit its stroke, and the flashing piece of mischief 
fell in harmless descent, his arm dropping lifeless at his side. 

Next he gave himself to the turf. He was terrified, an icy 
perspiration oozed from his forehead, his heart panted, his 
nerves were trembling like the leaves of the tree beneath 
which he lie. He was reclining in the shadow of the wings of 
fate. As it was a punishment for him to remain, for any 
length of time, in any one position, he rose and conferred 


214 


exercise to his quaking limbs. Had he reposed on a bed of 
roses, or walked on a pavement of gold, it would have failed 
to alleviate his wild distress, so far was he advanced upon the 
toboggan slide of life. 

As he proceeded toward the house, he looked never a time 
behind — a sign of stupid trouble. His mind, like his person, 
was on the march; all was a farrago. He was a prodigy of 
gloom, within whose frenzied frame raged the floods of 
anguish, like the hot artillery of battle, or the bowels of 
Vesuvius. Besides, his rage, caused by Ruth’s attention, con- 
tinued the remainder of the day ; it pursued him into the night 
and accompanied him to bed ; it dispensed with his slumber 
and harassed him. Sleep and angry sorrow reside not in the 
same mansion. 

We will look deeper into Amos Felton’s career previous to 
his brother’s Reappearance., The year preceding this occur- 
rence, his branches of plebeian delights were spreading, his 
roots of evil deep. He was sauntering upon the cupola of 
bliss like a weather-vane ; he was kissed by the cardinal points 
of joy. He was in the zenith of his fame as a FalstafT. The 
tide of his enjoyment was at its flood, and he was passing the 
estivation of his ripeness. He was benignant with his com- 
panions, amiable with his amours, boisterous with his enemies, 
amicable with all friends. 

At the age of eighteen he had absolved himself from ma- 
ternal vigilance, and had emerged occasionally from beneath 
the paternal roof to bask in the sunshine of merriment. He 
boarded the vessel of sport. Once adrift on the bosom of 
ecstacy, the wanton breezes of bliss began to waft him down 
the stream of time. The years were passed at intervals and 
disappeared in the dim and waning wake and distance. 
Eventually, like a pilot, covered with a foam of excitement, 
he steered into the gulf of dissolution. Around him oscillated 
tbe waves of concert, and above him circulated the zephyrs of 
fKapsody, and within him sang the hollow murmur of the 


215 


ocean’s roar. He was standing on the festive world — a proto- 
type of mirth. To him all pleasures were delightful, none 
painful. A spendthrift of his tongue, a gourmand of his 
purse, a prodigal of his morals, a voluptuary of his life; such 
was this recreant spark in the furnace of the world — a nucleus 
for vices which never rained upon him in his cradle. He 
would drown his tongue in the substance of the bowl ; smother 
his eyes with the beauty of the sex; and choke his ears with 
the sensuality of company. In one circumstance he was a 
philanthropist; he would squander his time and mouth and 
money and morals in the clinking glass, the rosy sex, the rat- 
tling dice, the garish cards, the tilting ten-pins, and the click- 
ing ivory billiard balls. He was a miniature walking tun of 
Heidelberg. Among a few he was known as the Comus of the 
saloon, the Bacchus of the wine-room, the Epicurus of the 
Cafe, the Cupid of the salon, the Momus of ^he dance-hall, 
and the Croesus of the opera, they perceiving that prating 
was his angel, pleasure his heaven, and gold his God. He 
was a human ocean into which flowed all pleasures and felici- 
ties. 

It was while occupying this throne, that his brother, Morris, 
suddenly flashed across his horizon of contentment, and where 
joy forever had its refuge, grief now found an asylum. Thus 
from the attic of cheer, he had descended the staircase to the 
cellar of gloom when he was accosted by Ruth — the tributary 
of his pleasure — on this, her second visitation, which almost 
terminated in catastrophe. 

Amos Felton had actually loved Ruth May bloom, yet love 
can quickly be decapitated, as there is a guillotine for love as 
well as for humanity. 

But unlike the usual populace, who addict themselves to dis- 
sipation when weighed down by importunities, the portly 
Amos had forsaken sport — of which he was the slave, — and in 
turn, became a child of temperance, led on by sorrow — of 
which he was the serf. He had ceased to explore the valleys 


216 


of amusements and search the ways of pleasure and follow 
the circuit of his entertainments, and became a recluse, a self 
audience to his monopathy. His days became wearisome, his 
nights burdensome. Grief was keeping cheerless vigil through 
his woeful nights, and unabled him to fold his lids, incline his 
arms, ease his heart, or extend his knees in sleep. He was 
then owner of a new temperament in which he was arrayed. 
Where he formerly carried a flask of liquid death, he was now 
supplied, instead, with a flagon of deathly grief, which might 
end in death his grietful life. He became no longer in- 
ebriated with the foamy fumes of liquor, he was now potulent 
with the noxious breaths of sorrow. His rubicund sir, so 
freshly gilded by ruby draughts, was beginning to reveal 
cheeks of very livid dye. 

True, this amoret was blasted and his halcyon days flung to 
the four winds. Piles of woes consumed his heart. No 
medicine in chemistry could liniment his pain, and his gloomy 
dark expressions augmented with each day. No collodion in 
surgery would suffice to stanch the wound that wealth had 
made, and his sore leaking bosom was draining his life. No 
St. Jacob’s oil was strong enough in patent to heal the bruise 
of his contentment. His eyes waxed dim, his ears vacant, his 
heart heavy, his life miserable. Often was he moved to tears, 
remembering the former silvered days arabesqued with golden 
joys. 

Mrs. Felton was much grieved that her son, Amos, should 
don the visor of humiliation, knowing that Morris’s campaign 
of sorrow was a precurser of disaster. She feared lest some 
calamity should befall him also, and was anxious to have peace 
and quiet dwell within the limits of her home. 

One who has delved in sorrow’s soil, or dived into the 
lake of vile affliction, is able to judge the misery of another. 
Morris could infer from his previous life, and the mother from 
her former period, of the sour labor of their son and brother’s 
baneful bosom. They perused the map of woe delineated on 


217 


his features, and Morris, on several occasions, had observed 
Ruth, the lass of the jilted heart, so conditioned to sorrow 

by Amos, the author of her fall. The knowledge he had 

gleaned in this affair, convinced him as to his brother’s 
struggle with distress, until a certain day he heard him volun- 
teer the following monologue : 

“This sea of troubles almost overwhelms me. This ocean of 
sorrows nearly engulfs me. I am utterly capsized by the bil- 
lows of torment. The world imagines me a sort of Judas, not 
betraying my master, but deceiving my mistress, and appre- 
hends such the source of my ailment. It is not that. Could 

I but slip the knot of this dire fate, but I must continue to 

wrestle with my doom. I cannot lose myself in peace. My 
brother is a thief; that is the question. Yes! Morris is a 
thief — an embezzler; he stole my cup of joy. I am deprived 
of the comfort of drinking deep of that intoxicating vessel. 
He not only wrenched from me delight, he filched from me 
my life of wealth. He could remain off the earth ; yes, off the 
earth it is, off my world, at least, three years ! why not his 
life?” 

This soliloquy confirmed Morris, and now he knew the 
reason of his brother’s agony. Yet, notwithstanding half the 
wealth Amos lost by his brother’s gain, which occupied his 
thoughts, Ruth Maybloom’s visit now involved him in much 
concern, for he was swimming in grief. 

With this prostration, Wednesday arrived; he had not for 
three successive nights received a moment’s touch of slumber, 
pining over his troublesome affairs. It was a lethal pestilence 
that infected the mansions of his brain, and it wounded one 
to witness the translation of his health. Really it was a day 
that assisted in fanning the flame of mortification. A cloudy 
day it was, with a raw, bleak and chilling east driving dismal 
clouds, — a damp veil of night in day making a Stygian sky. 

Amos Felton had advanced to the acme of his affliction, the 
stage in which a crisis was imminent. His light had melted 


218 


into night; his foolish heart was forever darkened. Imagina- 
tions weird and wicked gamboled in his house of thought. 
Thinking he had stood, the mirthful fellow fell. Envy to- 
ward his brother had expanded his despondency to the stretch 
of bursting. His brain was with a hurly-burly shuffled. Be- 
neath the sheen of his vizard grinned the grimace of misery. 

‘'Non sum quails eram ! I am not now what I once was 
This would have been fairly applicable to Amos Felton, and 
he thought, perhaps, he did not like to be his brother’s 
keeper. He endeavored to relieve himself by giving employ- 
ment to his feet. He strolled to the orchard, to the field of 
maize, to the woods, returned and entered the barn, issued 
forth again, ventured a short distance on the road, retraced 
his steps, unconsciously pursuing his way as if tracing some 
perplexing puzzle. His brain was on fire, his heart melted, 
his hands were made feeble, his spirit faint, his knees weak as 
water, his flesh trembled. Nothing would comfort him, extri- 
cate him from his peril and his doom, and his destiny awaited 
him. He was inwardly a naphtha of excitement. His very 
speech was gone, his mouth sewed up in silence. He was a 
receptacle in which boiled grief, raging against his flaccid side, 
which almost necessitated ribs of steel to bandage up his plung- 
ing cone of fury. 

Seldom on this day, did his mind revert to Ruth’s suspense 
of fate — his companion in the toils of misery- — who recognized 
in him a meretricious lover. In truth, he was now but a 
shadowi Thoughts as black as the inky river of Algeria, and 
imaginations gloomy as the Catacombs of Rome, squirmed in 
the grottoes of his brain. He was an Egypt humanized, or 
brutalized, or sacrificed to half a score of plagues which 
clouded his existence. It was the torment of an earthly sheol, 
for this life to him was but a cell of bitterness, the world a 
spectrum of sorrows. 

In the midst of this whirlwind of disaster he is swashed into 
the house, where, at present, he disappears from view like a 


219 


hermit in his cave, and, consequently, another sensation in the 
Felton family is born. 

Thus had the day wore away, and early set the evening in. 
Anxiety was pictured on the countenance of Mrs. Felton and 
Morris, her son; she was excited and weeping, he was agi- 
tated. They evaded, as it seemed, as much as possible, the 
remainder of the household. The other members of the Fel- 
ton circle stood in their usual frame of mind, and did not wear 
the aspect of disturbance. 

When night closed in, Amos Felton was not present; when 
morning broke, he was still absent. The entire day he was 
nowhere to be seen, and the following day his disappearance 
he did not disclose. All believed him to have disappeared. 
News of this incident, like a full eastern moon, began to 
crimson the social horizon of the community, and bathe its 
population in the flooding light of a sensation. It was the 
second enigma arising from the Felton place, the younger 
brother’s mystery brother to the elder brother’s once decamp- 
ment. 

In a few days more Ruth Maybloom was blessed, or, rather, 
unblessed with this dark information, which affected her like 
a fever. 

This was a dilemma; Morris reappeared, and Amos disap- 
peared; the lost found and the found lost. It was the two 
brothers arranged vice-versa on the compass of life. 

Mrs. Felton would not converse upon this strange occur- 
rence. During Morris’s sojourn abroad, she would recurrently 
indulge in conversation with her friends appertaining to his 
absence. Now she was taciturn. When one would originate 
a sally of speech against the younger son’s cloud of secrecy, 
she would, in all suspicion, direct the shaft of conversation 
toward another object. She was as silent as the silent lost 
himself — on this theme a veritable Niobe. She was a much 
bereaved mother, and another incubus of grief, spider-like, had 
attached itself to her bosom. Morris, also, was just as reti- 


220 


cent. Numerous companions of Amos would frequently 
inquire of Morris concerning his whereabouts, but they were 
made no wiser. 

Some, in essaying to give explanation to the reason of this 
reticence, would say : 

“She was a better lover of the elder son — the pride of the 
family.” 

Others : 

“The younger son, naturally wayward, would produce no 
such sorrow in a mother’s heart.” 

Different persons controlled different opinions. One lo- 
quacious bachelor even ventured to say : “Lightning striking 
twice in the same place is sufficient to numb the tongue and 
still the voice.” 

Time drifted on, and eventually Amos Felton’s remembrance 
faded from each one’s memory, save the mother’s alone. 


221 


CHAPTER XXVIL 


LIFE THE SLAVE OF TIME. 

Amos Felton, the chronic pleasure seeker, after forming 
Ruth Maybloom’s acquaintance, began to cultivate that ac- 
quaintance. The seed of love once sown, his purpose was to 
reap as a reward, the harvest of pleasure. He never sought 
to avoid the mistakes that flesh is heir to, yet, for all this, Ruth 
had been his favorite flower. She was cheerful, radiant, 
docile and pliant — a flora of the human type. As his love and 
visits amended toward Ruth, his company and affection less- 
ened from his other sweetings. He opened her ear to his 
merry voice and so controlled her love. He became as obedient 
to her as the needle to the pole ; she was the midnight lamp, 
he the obeying tide. 

Ruth, at a premature age, began to lay her eye — her lively, 
living eye — upon the firmer sex. Love was indigenous to her 
heart, and the pride of the community was she — the dazzling 
miss of the jetty hair and eyes. Her mouth was ever very 
busy; a mouth which kisses could not stop. At last she be- 
came familiar with Amos Felton, a torch of wit and humor 
— a will-o’-the-wisp in the night. He was a sun rising, she a 
rising moon. Her life henceforth from her introduction with 
Amos was a pleiad of joys, a nebula of pleasures. But then 
for a time, these darkened; it was during the few weeks of 
Amos’s ailment. That event presented her with a goading 
care ; his love was director of her care, yet it was a golden 
care. Would he remain apart from her forever? Her gentle 
nature fulminated against this procedure, her heart ebbed 
and flowed, was now filled with grief, now with fear. 


222 


In the outpouring of her anguish, a letter came. This was 
a nuncio of good tidings — an angel transformed as a billet- 
doux. Like a lark — the quirister of dawn — she again soared 
into the atmosphere of delight, and was, like a dove — the 
premonitor of dusk — transported on the wings of love. Her 
brain was once more the emporium of air-castles, and her 
heart again the laboratory of anthems, for they continued 
connected in the orb of bliss. 

News leaped from mouth to ear that Amos’s brother, 
Morris, the long lost, had returned. Ruth hoped that this 
occurrence would result in Amos’s Elysium, but it was, in fact, 
his Inferno. It jarred the zone of his calculations, wrecked 
his promise, and his visits instantly paused a second time. 

Ruth again fell into the revery that controlled her at a 
former period, her days growing burdensome, her nights 
loathsome. Her heart beat like a battery in her breast. Slum- 
ber would not lie upon her eyelids, or sleep creep into her eyes ; 
those comfortless nights were tearful. Nor did her departed 
joy return with each succeeding morning following her nights 
of weeping, and, sad as it seems, she was destined never to 
regain on this planet the throne of joy. 

Finally, in the village, Ruth came in contact with the ruffled 
Amos, now moody as a slave, and who, as she thought, just 
twirled her round his little finger. This meeting was a repulse 
for this quean of pleasure, for she was familiar with her condi- 
tion. She became a prey to sad thoughts, was a representative 
of man’s duplicity, an orphaned derelict child of Amos Felton’s 
love and guilt — as a penalty of her waywardness. She was 
unable to muster up the shadow of a comfort. Her day of 
pleasure, her life of joy had dawned, shone with exceeding 
lustre, and, flickering, departed, and submerged in twilight’s 
rueful hour, where night’s doleful sorrows began to cluster 
round her brow. Often did her eye run down with rivers of 
water, and her damask, rosy cheeks were ravaged by the 
larceny of grief. She revolved in a zodiac of sorrows. She 


223 


had swallowed the camel of pleasure, and now was straining 
at the gnat of grievance. She had cultivated love and pleasure, 
but a famine of companionship wasted away the harvest home 
of her delight. A wilderness of torment, a dry land of sorrow, 
a desert of misery was the affliction of the lass of the broken 
heart, and the pitchy gloom was dilating. 

Several weeks were so seasoned, Amos Felton refusing to 
dull her edge of sorrow or whet her joy. 

As he still neglected to re-open the engagement of love with 
her, she prepared to restore him to his proper state and wel- 
fare. So one quiet Sabbath, she held a colloquy with Amos at 
his home. But the deed of barbarism he had offered to com- 
mit, haunted her, and hastened her approaching end. No wet 
messengers brined her countenance, weeping a thing of the 
past — buried in the cemetery of her sorrow. The division of 
their hearts gave to her grief as a quotient, yet Amos lingered 
in her soul like snow in the lap of winter. This lad of memory 
was deeply treasured in her mind. He had moved round the 
orbit of her love, and was not slow to put shame upon her, 
winning this wrong with the promise of a love. Now sor- 
rows were her food and sighs her drink, which created scissors 
of despair to mutilate the stomach of her gracefulness. The 
lips of love were now ruled by the tongue of sorrow, and the 
parched rivers of her blood endangered her heart, her queen 
of hearts — a dethroned, panting queen. 

Since her fluster with Amos Felton, six days were done. 
And during this sexenary of days she was neither asleep by 
night, nor awake by day; she imitated a diurnal sleeper, and 
corresponded to a nocturnal waker. At night she was half 
awake, and frequently would pace her room ; in the day she 
was half asleep, and casually would lapse in dormancy. Amos 
Felton’s love would have been her opiate by night, her stimulus 
by day; its return would have been her anodyne forever. 

Anterior to her stroke of jilted love, she would pray on joy, 
where grief did now prey on her ; and posterior to his reversal 


224 


of affection, she had entirely ceased to raise her eyes, or ele- 
vate her woes toward heaven ; grief canceled the remembrance 
of her God. 

She was shackled in the fetters of misfortune. She seldom 
spoke word more, the soothing murmur of her voice had 
lost its charm. Sorrow absorbed the bloom of her complexion, 
thus darkening the light of her young days. The rose of 
youth and beauty on her features faded. This Kochinoor of 
grace and pearl of radiance was now the lost and sullied 
treasure of society. 

Gamaliel Dollinger, on arriving home from the borough on 
a certain Saturday, notified his wife of the mystery surround- 
ing the disappearance of Amos Felton. Ruth was present at 
this sad information. 

“What, has Amos Felton parried the notice of all?” she 
asked excitedly. 

“He is nowhere to be found — a mystery which dwells darkly 
with every one,” Gamaliel answered. . 

Ruth clapped her hand upon her heart and started. A voice 
spoke within her, saying : “I am lost ; death find me !” 

Embalmed in her memory, her heart, her life, as Amos was, 
his breach of love, broken vow, and, in addition, his secret 
removal, was an unbearable advent to her. She became as 
giddy as a star. She was entering further into the torrid 
zone of tortures, and her face exhibited a gloomy horror. The 
thorn sunk deeper into her flesh, her face the picture of a 
ghost. 

She passed aside to remain a while in solitude. He, who 
manacled her mind, shackled her heart, fettered her soul, even 
burdened her hands, yoked her feet, and impaled her good 
name, had vanished and, perhaps, forever. Great were her 
writhings during the remainder of the day. As a pearl in an 
oyster, so lay her love within her heart — useless, Amos failing 
to recognize it latterly. And so the romantic Ruth had out- 
romanced her romanticness, all on account of Amos, her Icarus 


8 


225 


in his fatal flight and wolfish greed for the grasp and use of 
wealth. 

Evening came, followed by twilight, which was, in turn, pur- 
sued by night. Ruth was already sitting in her apartment by 
tJie open window and peering into expanse. The candle was 
not lighted, as the crescent of the west furnished her a plenti- 
tude of light for her ramble of reflection. She was reclining 
with her arms on the sill of the window, engaged in one of her 
darkest and direst reveries, in which were mingled all the 
imaginations arising from the expanse of time, past, present, 
and future. 

The spectacle of night, the various sounds that proceeded 
from the shadows, and the patient flood of moonshine, struck 
upon her ear and eye without effect. She was as dull as night 
itself, her mind as drear as Labrador, her heart as dark as 
Erebus. Once she could have governed numerous suitors for 
her heart, but now she could find no comfort among them all. 
So her torch of hope had burned out ; besides, she could dis- 
cover no antidote for her misery. Grief had seized upon her 
like an octopus. She was thus controlled by her love — a use- 
less blessing now; in truth, she was mourning her love’s 
obituary. He who was to her ten times more precious than 
the golden wedge of Ophir, caused her to speak in her mind : 
“Life is not worth living now, but death is worth dying.” 

Sitting silently in the portal of her window, facing the cool 
breeze of evening beneath the silent stars, radiant with the 
touch of moonlight, somber with the taint of spilled virtue, 
encumbered with a heap of cares, her troubled mind reverted 
to the happy past. She recalled to mind the throng of ad- 
mirers seeking her ; the happy swains in wooing terms ; the 
strophes of the dance; the host of lovers she dismissed; the 
rejoicing hearts she dimmed; the reigning king of her queenly 
bosom; the overthrow of her love and her life’s purest part; 
the present trophy of her past error; and the cloudy and por- 
tentous future. 


226 


This medley of impressions rummaged the apartments of her 
brain, and thusly was she pondering: “Has Amos, my joy, 
my love, my hope, has he taken egress from my attentions? 
Would he were present at this moment as with the telescope 
of love I perused him in my soul’s content. For his friendship 
and his love, as I presumed, I paid him love as tribute, so why 
will he not return to me and revive my sorrow-stricken heart ? 
My soul magnified him above all rivals ; he was a sphere of 
wit, mirth and sport — a major planet of the world. His love, 
a bouquet I wore at my bosom, though it wilted and withered 
away, will never be forgotten. How sweet it was to lie be- 
neath the shadow of his company, which I had the pleasant 
service of so long. His face I thought resembled that of an 
angel, but his heart was by that face disguised, for by his de- 
ceptive love, he placed me where I am. He is parent to my 
grief. When I surrendered him my heart, I imagined it would 
dwell within the bonds of love securely. My eyes are barren 
now, grief having drunk their moisture. Failing to administer 
to me, to whom he was with love indebted, the wealth of his 
respective visits, I counseled with him tenderly and lovingly, 
and yet vehemently at his home, but he infused no hope in me, 
nor favored me with happiness. He was devoid of all ex- 
planation. He was a sweet-tongued, mealy-mouthed, sugar- 
lipped, velvet-faced purchaser of my peace. My days are 
dismal, my nights terrible ; day resorts me to humiliation, 
night haunts me with her dreams. What am I to the world 
now — a fallen star ; or, rather, what is the world to me — a 
blurred planet. One cannot force upon one’s self the sleep 
of sleep, but one can coerce upon one’s self the sleep of death ; 
so I will obtain some means wherewith to meet death swiftly. 
I live in torment ; I will cleanse myself of this woe : I cannot 
outface this sorrow. It were better I prostrate my length into 
the grave. I will do it, and without much hesitation. Because 
my lover and deceiver will not comfort me I will my ransom 
purchase.” 


227 


CHAPTER- XXVIIL 


.TOWARD THE ABYSS. 

Such was the flight of Ruth’s mind. Upon this human 
lighthouse beat the tempest of sorrow most furiously. It was 
woe and torment, from morn’s earliest hour until evening’s 
latest minute, and the night was not her own in peace. Days, 
even weeks, had piled distress upon her, and no ventilation 
could she give her heart. A sudden chill encompassed her 
about, which interrupted her. She instantly retired, and, like 
many previous nights, could devise no remedy for sleepless- 
ness ; she could not steep her mind in the nectar of repose — the 
blessed restorer of her vigor. However, shortly after twelve, 
her gentle friend stole in through the windows of her brain, 
and quieted her cares. 

The time stole on. For four hours she lived in perfect har- 
mony with herself and all the world, when suddenly she awoke 
with a start, a scream escaping her. She was frightened, and 
placed her hand upon her bosom, as if to pacify the palpitation 
of her heart. She had dreamed a dream. 

With the drift of time, yet another Saturday came to the 
sinking Ruth, a week passing somehow, like the preceding 
ones, irksome ; and no more the slightest part of the poetry of 
peace, the charm of hope, the metre of life, stirred in her 
bosom; even love was driven from her heart. On the after- 
noon of this same Saturday, in a fit of despondency, secreting 
herself in her room, she proceeded to write a manuscript. 
Some time was required to complete her script intention. 

The next day was a beautiful day, Sunday — the Sabbath of 
our God. In the afternoon of this holiest of days, a decided 


228 


change had occurred in Ruth's demeanor. She seemed to have 
emerged from her lair of grief, she displayed such reviving 
cheerfulness and ecstacy. Her ancient bend of humor seemed 
to be restored, for she laughed, chatted and jested. She re- 
lated to Mrs. Bollinger her cheerless dream, now a week’s 
age. The import of her dream was as follows : 

“My sleep saw me strolling in the wholesome evening. The 
sun was setting dim behind a mountain of clouds piled in 
masses on the western horizon, but I, confused by the bustle 
of my mind, gave it no consideration. The sultry atmosphere 
reverberated sounds distinctly, echoing against the adjacent 
patches of woods. 

“I reached the creek and followed along its sloping banks. 
Presently, a short distance in advance, I detected a form, 
which had purchased my eyes’ attendance, floating serenely on 
its bosom, and was brought to a standstill, almost spellbound. 
I approached and with fear the buoyant figure, when, to my 
alarm, I recognized in the object a human floater. In my 
terror, I was undecided whether to remain or flee, when, in- 
haling courage, probably by the rapid racing of my breath or 
gallop of my heart, I resolved to approach for a closer in- 
spection. I did so, when, lo ! to my horror, it was the image of 
myself. 

“I nearly fainted, nearly fell, for I know my knees smote 
together. There, in that cold sheet of water, my face shrivel- 
ed, my hair disheveled, frowsy, and floating on the surface 
of the current, I perceived myself dead, shrunken, horrible. 

“I returned and fled, fearing to look behind, afraid the 
ghastly image be pursuing me, until, finally, I attained the 
road. It was dark night. A breath of wind in my face re- 
versed the ebb of my exhaustion, and rustled the foliage of a 
stalwart oak near by, when, on recovering my sight from my 
fear, and raising my eyes, I beheld the approach of a storm. 

“I endeavored to increase again my footsteps, but found 
my strength expended in my flight. A peal of thunder broke 


229 


from the heavens overhead, and rolled along the zenith to- 
ward the horizon in the west, instantly followed by raindrops 
which began to pelt the earth. It may possibly have thundered 
previous to the stroke I was awakened to, but so deeply was I 
engrossed in affairs of dire augury, that I recognized it not. 

“The storm increased while the rain was pouring down, 
the copious torrents drenched me through, the angry gusts 
of hurricane beating upon me with such violence that almost 
drowned was poor, frightened and shivering I. The flashes of 
lightning, and bolts of thunder rendered me almost blind and 
deaf. 

“Not many minutes more would have needed to elapse, ere 
I would have succumbed to the efforts of the storm; but just 
as I had approached the rise of the hill, and was already be- 
ginning the ascent. I was confronted by another vision — a 
seeming real living vision — an intruder in my journey in the 
thickest of the storm. It was the outline of a man enveloped 
in a halo, with a heavenly countenance ; his head, from which 
fluttered tresses of rich, beautiful hair, was encompassed by 
an aureole. My eyes were dilated by the darkness, but, be- 
coming accustomed to the illumination, I discovered that he 
who appeared before me was the figure of the man of Resur- 
rection — even the living Son, the Savior Jesus, — presenting 
such a picture as conveyed to the eye from the plates as seen 
in books ; only I beheld the living Christ. 

“I stopped immediately. This divine messenger then spread 
forth his arms slowly in the midst of the storm, and, casting 
his soft, sweet face sternly to the heavens, shouted aloud in 
the most musical and enchanting voice that mortal ever heard : 
‘Peace be still!’ and almost instantly the storm was hushed. 

“With a deft motion of the hand he did beckon me ap- 
proach, and I, obeying, saw, to my terror, a plain casket stand- 
ing on the ground beside him, and, as I gazed within, trem- 
bling as I stood, I recognized a form, pale and still, clad in a 
shroud as fleecy and pure as snow. She was lifeless and cold. 


230 


her white face pinched in the vise of death. For the second 
time I looked upon myself as dead, the corpse me. I screamed 
aloud and was awakened. Such was my dream.” 

A few days posterior to Ruth’s interview with her lover in 
the village, when he so cleverly renounced her, she acquainted 
Mrs. Dollinger as to her enciente, and that she had fallen 
through the faithless Amos. Having communed together 
apart, her husband and herself, they resolved to succor her in 
her distress, instead of disclaiming her. They were a philan- 
thropic people, and knew it was but human for a child of the 
King to walk the giddy way of wrong. They forgave her 
wrong and her, and assisted her to bear her burden ; they were 
the sun and moon to this lost child — crutches on which she 
hobbled on her way. 

The evening of this Sabbath was delightful. It was the 
midway of October. The sun was waning in the west, when 
Ruth egressed from the house. She took a postern exit, de- 
siring not to be observed by the others of the household. She 
reached the highway and glanced warily around ; not a soul 
was in sight. She cleared the fence and continued on her 
mind’s marked path, toward the creek that wound through the 
arable champaign. 

This wretched damsel, again having subsided to her misery, 
was escorted by sorrow ; or, rather, she was guided by the 
finger of destiny. Grief and disappoined love were leading 
her astray. Her life had been full of love — love hostile to 
her life. Her elastic step had vanished, and she moved as 
solemnly as a shadow. 

Love paints the world for the lover, but to Ruth the lids 
of Nature’s book seemed closed. Nature js one’s friend, it 
appeared her enemy. She did not perceive the autumn beauty, 
the October grandeur ; she possessed a pair of charming eyes, 
yet she was blind, love, eradicated, blinding her. 

The sun disappeared behind a scroll of clouds. It was a 
charming evening, maugre the azu^e tinted clouds, from which 


231 


flashingly protruded at intervals, forky tongues of lightning 
— a harbinger of a storm. Various sounds — mimic small 
Babels of noises — emanated from the contiguous woods and 
stream. The leaves were turning into a tarnished erythrophyl- 
line. Mother Nature was. aging — her grasses, her hedges, 
her mosses, her rank clouds of leaves, her climate. The 
birds, so joyous in their song, had ceased their musical tirades, 
and their circle-woven nests, once the reception of oval eggs 
— wombs of the downy young — were empty. Robins, black- 
birds, thrushes, bobolinks — all gems of ornithology that con- 
gregate in flocks — were preparing for their migratory flight, 
and were cheerlessly piping the funeral of their season. A 
flock of wild fowl, those palmipeds of the wing, instinctive to 
their babits, were proceeding southward, in V-shaped file, 
their hoarse and husky hunks at intervals descending. Every- 
where was reflected the emblem of decay and death; the 
brilliant plumage of the birds were fading, the tinseled bosoms 
of the flowers reduced in splendor, the bedaubed insects were 
dwindling away, save a few lingering species, and the nipping 
frosts had killed the summer roses. 

Ruth had arrived at the creek, and stood in despondence 
upon the bank, as she gazed into its depths. She saw nothing, 
heard nothing; all was empty, hollow, joyless, wasteless soli- 
tude and vacancy. Her mind was sketching pictures of love, 
moulding statues of maidenhood, creating images of angels, 
and other ideas circled there like demons around a pile of 
blazing fagots. A vague destiny appeared its yawning jaws 
to open before her, and casting her eyes within, she beheld 
wheeling swarms of phantoms, which abyss she fancied gap- 
ing to engulf her. 

Her mind was exploring another world, and no camphor 
of condolement could have aroused her more in this. She 
began to walk the shore downwards with the stream, and with 
palsied step. She was nearing the tomb, and death himself 
with his cold hand did lead her. She would occasionally 


232 


glance into the current, as though it contained a laudanum for 
her misery. Would she choose the cold stream as guardian 
of her sorrow ? 

She came to a stop. One might have distinguished softly 
from her lips: “This is the place!” Indeed, she was strug- 
gling in a dreary world, where, formerly, her life had been a 
continual holiday. She was swallowed up in misery’s fright- 
ful whirlpool, her soul melting in the depth of that vortex. 

She approached an adjacent willow, and, rifling the weep- 
ing tree of a portion of its pendent, withy branches, and quiet- 
ly seating herself upon a knoll, she began unconsciously to 
weave them into a wreath — perhaps, a crown. She ventured 
to hum, swan-like, a few suppressed gems of a song, which 
struck the air nervously and sadly feeble. At that moment 
her labor and her revery was interrupted by a staring owl, 
that perched himself upon a branch near by, uttering a dole- 
ful musical of screeches, as agent to her grief. It thrilled 
her to the very marrow of her bones. Peradventure, if neces- 
sity required, and a dirge needed to be administered, this wise, 
ill-omened bird was preparing to officiate. 

She rose and rambled despondently around. The moon had 
just appeared, and Ruth discerned it gazing like the owl at 
her. She continued her hap-hazard steps, her to and fro 
saunter, her twinging progress, and, like the fair Ophelia, in- 
voluntary particles and shades of music and of notes musically 
mournful fell from unknowing lips. A shudder would oc- 
casionally transude her frame ; her willows dropped from her 
hands ; she ceased to sing. It seemed that instrument of joy 
and pleasure had lost its melody forever, and the dancing 
smiles of that once happy face would act no more. She was 
a collapsed queen of life ; her love had been a too loyal love. 
She looked into the abyssmal vista of the future, as she had ar- 
rived at the extremity of woe, which is also life’s extremity. 
Her hope, already fled, awaited her beyond. Her dazed, 
dreaming powers drew her towards the current, and she stood 


233 


close to the water’s edge. Before her was a liquid grave a 
full fathom’s depth. She fastened her hood tightly, held her 
dress in one hand firmly, stooped forward fearlessly, and was 
suspended over the stream. Looking anxiously, she saw 
heaven reflected in its bosom. One plunge and all was ended ; 
she had entered, which entrance ended her life’s fitful fever, 
and enclosed her in the bower of immortal sleep. 


234 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


STRANGEST SCENE OF ALL. 

Four men, in the temporary office of fishermen, were en- 
gaged in fishing. They were fishers of fish, not fishers of 
men. They were not forward in luck’s proud play, being as 
yet almost wholly devoid of that ancient and fish-like smell 
which characterizes the fortunate piscator. They sought and 
explored all the sequestered recesses where the timid pectorals 
might lurking lie. They employed different methods of 
finesse to capture these jewels of the pale-flesh. The time 
might have been straying to three. They were following up- 
wards along the stream, on the right bank, and frequently 
dropped their weighted, hamated, and baited lines into the 
current. At intervals, with enduring patience on the 
part of the anglers, one of the scrubby inhabitants of the 
aqueous world, and occasionally a generous one, would be 
safely landed, and as he dancing turned his dazzling sides, he 
looked beautiful — a very gasping gem.' The gymnasts of the 
finny water were promptly suffocated, excepting at times, some 
tenacious catfish, cat, ’possum, or bacilla lived. 

Lawrence Comblair, the squire of the village, was the 
originator of this angling excursion. A broken conversation 
flourished periodically, and they spoke in suppressed tones. 

“This is a tempting and inviting south,” remarked one of 
the anglers, “and I cannot conceive why the fish do so little 
justice to our bait.” 

“Yes,” replied the squire, “the tendency of the wind from 
the southern quarter is to assist the fisherman, and the day 
should recompense us freely for our labors.” 


235 


“Look to your buoy, squire !’^ urged one of the group. “It 
is dancing a reel.” 

The squire became observant, and a little after, a small, 
gilded, circular sunfish was describing an arc in the air. The 
quartette burst into laughter. Two of the Isaak Walton’s ad- 
vanced farther up the shore of the stream. 

“Let us cast our tackle here !” said one. “This place abounds 
in fish, as the veterans of the rod give information.” 

“It is,” confirmed the others. “Here we may look for the 
beauties of this creek. I once heard Sam Wilson describe 
this shelter of the fish, and he named this fishy hole the fishes’ 
roost.” 

The two participants of this dialogue, having arranged 
their snary bait the while, drowned their barbed hooks in the 
stream. Several excellent specimens were hastily withdrawn 
from their watery repose. Presently one of these fishermen’s 
hooks became involved with some obstacle in the bottom. It 
was stubbornly affixed, and for a time repulsed extrication, 
when, finally, after a struggle, it was released. An unnatural 
weight clung to the hook, and which was found to be a section 
of a decayed branch of a tree. This home of the gills and fins 
and scales seemed also a maelstrom for rubbish. 

Shortly after, the peace of the companion fisherman was also 
hindered, a similar fate occurring to his line. The owner de- 
vised means for its release, but it resisted still. Right and left, 
to and fro, up and down, he lured his line ; he pulled, he tore, 
he jerked, he lifted; the flexible rod bent like a bow; he 
talked, scolded, growled, and cursed with fishers’ oaths. An- 
other exertion, and the pliant rod was abstracting slowly out 
of the water another object that had suflfered detachment from 
the current’s depth. A shout of exaltation arose as the eager 
anglers gazed, and fairly gloated their saucer eyes; but their 
joy was turned to dismay on beholding a writhing, twisting 
specimen of the water hauled to land, only to detach his wrig- 
gling length from hook and line, and with slippery contor- 


236 


tions, descend the bank and disappear again to his watery 
embrace and bosom of his gambols. The unfortunate fisher- 
man leaped wildly after his prey, but he was gone from him 
forever. It was a prodigious eel — a king of the stream. 

The four men congregated together and indulged in talk. 
They then pursued their avocation. % 

Eventually, in some ten minutes or fifteen, after having in- 
creased their string of fish, the fisherman (he of the liberated 
eel) effected another discovery ; his hook had a second time 
become entangled with the bottom. He anticipated a twin 
eel. It was soon disengaged, and was dangling in the atmos- 
phere ; but, lo! an object foreign to their anticipation greeted 
their eyes ; it was a fragment of a woman’s apparel. This 
discovery again brought the anglers together, as their curios- 
ity was excited. Each, alternately, inspected the article ex- 
posed before their door of observation ; they scrutinized it, 
read it, philosophized over it, as if it were a volume disclos- 
ing the private resources of the creek. They consulted to- 
gether, the squire presiding. 

“This patch of cloth is a portion of some lady’s habit,” 
knowingly, the squire said, “and is but slightly faded; there- 
fore, it has been recently committed to the creek.” 

“Perhaps the stomach of this stream may disgorge a secret 
did we but irritate it,” one shrewd fisherman interfered. “It 
may have swallowed some calamity that lies a mystery here 
beneath.” 

The squire, silent, was pondering. By the expression of his 
countenance, his companions imagined him to be pursuing 
some special trail of discovery. 

“Let us illuminate this mystery !” argued one. 

“Let us investigate !” said another. 

“Let us fathom the current!” explained the third. 

“We will lift its hidden lore to the surface,” returned the 
first. 

“I have noticed somewhere, a female appareled in a similar 


237 


habiliment, but at present eludes my mental grasp,” the 
squire observed. “Yes, I perceive her as through a mist, 
feebly — Oh, sure enough ! I recall her now ! The lively 
young damsel of farmer Bollinger. She has eloped from her 
home, seduced by unpleasant circumstances, and I warrant 
she has become espoused to this stream. None know where 
her trouble led her, so we will find her here, as I imagine.” 

After some arrangements, they concluded to peruse the bed 
of the stream. A pole some dozen feet in length was pro- 
cured, and hostilities against the peaceful stream were begun. 
They probed the invulnerable water. These fishermen had 
turned surgeons, and were exploring that part of the stream 
where they presumed a projectile had entered; and, in faith, 
the entrance of one had been but recent, one of living flesh 
and blood. It was the precise locality Ruth Maybloom had 
selected for her tomb. 

In their exploration, an obstruction, a distance of five feet 
from the shore, interfered with their progress. They en- 
deavored to free the obstacle, thinking it was probably the 
corpse of her of whom the squire intimated, when, assisted by 
the buoyancy of the water, an object ascended to the surface. 
It was conveyed to the shore without much difficulty, and the 
inate, water shrunken body sadly placed upon a turfy 
esplanade. It was, really, the well-known Ruth Maybloom, 
and now her heart was still, her mouth silent, her face cold — 
a mourner draped in death. 

Thus, wrecked in the prime of maidenhood, and stunted in 
the blossom of her joy, she went to a watery grave ere the 
first quadrant of her voyage was completed. The fishermen 
imagining her beneath that surface had fished for her, angled 
for her, and landed her upon the shore. She was disturbed 
in her aquatic repose ; she was resurrected from her grave. 
These anglers had exhumed her, and stood solemnly and 
gazed lamentingly upon this pale, this bloodless, this lifeless 
mould. 


238 


This cinque of human forms resembled a tableau, which 
countenances revealed the expression, representing the pros- 
trate central figure mourned for as one dead. It was not a 
mock tableau, but a picture of reality. They despatched one 
of their number, poste-haste, to carry the melancholy informa- 
tion and sick news to the Dollingers. The hasty messenger 
of this sad intelligence sped as swift as Aquilon. 

Joy, love, pleasure, sorrow, despondency, death, were the 
sum of Ruth’s irregular life. Amos Felton had been her 
medicine and her poison. In the meridian of her happiness 
he had deserted her, departed from her liveliness ; in the apex 
of her bewilderment he had relinquished his love, retreated 
from her lavishness; in the summit of her distraction he had 
displaced the pillar of her hope, removed his crutch of justice. 
His flight from her life drew her to her death. She had 
generously entreated for his love, so fallen to revolt, but he 
was not pliant to her will. Thus her brightest, happiest day 
had darkened into night, gloomy, dismal, hideous night, night 
of sorrows, woes, tortures, terrors, terrors of wrong, terrors 
of dementia, terrors of darkness, terrors of death. 

Thus she had sighed and grieved and sorrowed herself out 
of this life and world. Her fault — that slip of love — had 
sealed her destiny. The bone of her contention was now 
broken ; she was the betrothed of death ; the curtain of her life 
was drawn. Thus she was cut of? in the morning of her ex- 
istence ; she was in the spring of life ; she was in the flower of 
her age ; she was in the prime of her beauty. 

The third day following her demise, her remains were fished 
up by the fishermen. And the cold, stiff, once warm and 
nimble Ruth, with her mouth locked in silence and her heart 
of sorrow stilled, lay in peaceful content upon the brink of her 
disturbed grave. And the trees, cradled by the lulling wind, 
were whispering her dirge ; the doleful murmur of the atmos- 
phere was hymning her requiem; the clouds, like shrouds of 
fleece, were covering her with alternate palls of shadows and 


239 


sheets of sunshine ; the creek, like an onward Lethe, dreamed 
silent dreams over the catastrophe; and the jolly fishermen did 
justice as her mourners. 

The squire, on arranging her rumpled dress, had observed 
a pocket in her apparel. Admitting his hand, he abstracted 
therefrom a small ' porte-monnaie, which, when opened, was 
found to contain a few coppers and one bit. In this purse 
was also discovered a note, rendered damp and soft by the 
water. This was unfolded with exceeding great care, but the 
elements had so obliterated the words, by blotting and soiling 
the parchment, that the epistle was almost illegible. The 
squire, eager for an explanation of this untimely death and 
ill deed, spread the sheet of information to the forces of the 
wind and sun for an effect of transposition. He would con- 
vert these water-blurred hieroglyphics into a clearer state, 
the air and sunshine, by drying the manuscript, assisting 
him. 

It was evident that Ruth was a felo-de-se. It was also 
evident that the one after whom she had walked and watched 
and followed, and whom she had loved and sought and served 
and worshipped, had disappeared, she could not otherwise but 
also disappear. With the harvest past, the summer ended, 
neither Amos nor Ruth were saved. 

While the feast of evidence, pertaining to the suicide— her 
calenture of love — was preparing, the triad of fishermen en- 
gaged in solemn conversation. The sun and wind rendering 
the manuscript favorable for handling, the squire proceeded 
to peruse aloud its contents. The other two anglers edged 
close to his worship’s readership. He began to read : 

“A Voice From The Grave.” 

“Hearken, the dead one speaks !’■’ said one of the listeners. 

“When I am found, and this discovered, all can have the 
pleasure (or sadness) of looking upon me, the map of death, 
painted by love’s misfortune. This script news is the in- 
scription of my grave-stone, or, rather, my grave parchment. 


240 


dedicated by my hand prior to my burial. I was enticed by 
the eye of love, lured to the hands of pleasure, pressed to the 
bosom of fate, and suffocated by the sinews of death. 

“After the sun of love refused to shine upon me, and the 
moon of peace declined to illuminate my pathway, and the 
stars of happiness were blotted out, I was lost and wandered 
unguided in darkness to my cemetery of water. 

“When this is being read, the sting of death will have al- 
ready penetrated me, and the grave will have embraced me 
in its folds. I have long since journeyed past the region of 
all hope, and have speedily approached the home of the great 
physician. The label of my trouble was the umpire which 
decided 'twixt my life and death ; no remedy else gave counsel 
to my wretched life and justified surmise. Since the cur- 
tains of my eyes refused to fall, and the roses of my cheeks 
faded, and my whole life dwindled into twilight, it was neces- 
sary for me to immure myself in the obscure night of the 
grave. 

“Since Amos Felton, my purest love, my gentlest thought, 
my tenderest emotion, froze me in the cold of his neglect, there 
was nothing in this world below so sweet and so consoling as 
this watery receptacle. He caused the surges of despair to 
drown my hopes, and he bestrid my love, heedless of my en- 
treaties. They were in vain. He imitated much a shadow; 
in my darkness he deserted me. He neglected to redeem my 
honor and my important self, so I destroyed what was left 
of me ; he would not co-operate with sleep to kill my troubled 
thoughts, so I employed death to murder them. 

“By imprisoning in my heart true love falsely, he caused 
me to pine away like the swan or dove. We were divorced 
ere we united were, or even ere we were affianced ; yet be- 
cause he stepped across the bounds of modesty, I was his 
wife. 

“He called me the fruit of his eye, the wealth of his heart, 
the apparel of his soul, the jewel of his bosom, the angel of 


241 


his life, and my easy mind, light heart, and swimming soul, 
were attached to him like a sponge to a rock. Denying me 
the husband of himself, I placed myself in the circumstance 
of death ; he being dead to me, I have myself so buried. The 
only true cordial of life is death ; it is of more value co me 
than amulets or charms. 

“Thus have I departed, following my Romeo. There re- 
mains my forgiveness — forgiveness to Amos Felton and to 
all the world. Such is the inscription and my epitaph. By 
myself — the forlorn Ruth Maybloom.” 

The reading of the message was completed, all having 
converged their strictest attention to this testament of death. 
Its revelation was satisfactory. 

By this time sounds were advancing towards the group in 
waiting. It was Gamaliel Dollinger and the returning mes- 
senger with a means of conveyance for the corpse. He was 
provided with a temporary bier, and, as he approached, they 
perceived that he evinced intense sharp excitement over this 
rash and imprudent act ; and on observing the frigid features 
and the heart-touching remains of his adopted daughter, his 
feelings were abruptly convulsed. Considering her self-dis- 
posal of life, there were those who would have denied Ruth 
an orderly burial, or even have deprived her of tlue customary 
rites of a funeral. The rights of the ordinary services were 
defended, nevertheless, by the friendly Bollingers and others, 
who desired that the remains of Ruth Maybloom be laid to 
quiet by the usual proceedings. 

Thus her tomb of water had been changed to one of earth, 
and she lay awaiting the judgment, in the sanctuary of a 
decent grave. 


242 


CHAPTER XXX. 


SAILING THE MATRIMONIAL SEA. 

On a selected Sunday the Felton mansion was all astir. 
It was the Sunday allotted for the wedding; our hero and 
heroine were to have become united, he having won the 
prize of his heart for life. The important event hastens close 
on the heels of our hero’s return, yet the three years of sad 
reflection during their separation only incited them on to 
speedier unity. A glance of friendship is the torch, a seed in 
the heart’s soft soil; the fuse once touched, the germ begun, 
Nature completes the ordeal. How simple a spark of love 
ignites the nuptial torch ! 

The day was bright, merry, autumnal. A copious rain had 
fallen the foregoing Friday, which shower was opportune. This 
ablution gave to the dusty earth a viviflc freshness, and the 
atmosphere was fragrant and exhilarating. The breezes play- 
ed among the laden trees, sported with the tasseled corn, 
frolicked with the nodding copses, and dallied with happy 
humanity. 

So the preparation of the hymeneal lamp commanded all the 
bustle that the Felton residence afforded, as Morris Felton and 
]\Iary Ogden were soon to be conjoined as one person, one 
hope, one love, one life. Two minds desired to be connected, 
two hearts joined, two souls blended, two natures mingled. 
A coterie of friends, neighbors, and relations had assembled. 
The beaming galaxy of sympathizers was not extensive, but 
the small multitude were well chosen company. Mary’s joy 
blossomed as she moved about like a queen of love and light. 
Morris was proud of his tender bride, as she was a lamp of 
virtue. 


243 


One cloud, however, floated over this happy heaven, and 
that was the veil introduced by the unhappy Amos, who did 
not participate in the rejoicing. Yet in the melody of this 
ovation, that, for the time, was but a speck, and almost 
nought. 

A gentleman present forwarded to Morris an envelope bear- 
ing his address. Stepping aside, he broke the seal, withdrew 
the minuscule, and perused the contents. It was James Bal- 
lon’s sympathy and congratulation. 

It said : 

“To Mr. Felton and Betrothed : 

“Word reached and fell upon my ear in envious surprise 
that you again a member are of our community. The lost 
is found, the dark is made light, the dead is brought to life. 
You glided flashing in our midst like a meteor, and it gives 
me but a solemn happiness to know that you can again occupy 
the throne of love, crowned with a wreath of joy. It is a 
vague delight for me to know of your sweet success, for the 
simple fact, that I also, was in the sacred race for your angel’s 
chaste and heavenly love. But beyond the waning jealousy 
I bear you, my whole heart expands for you and her, and all 
the sympathy I can pass muster, I extend to you and yours on 
this, your nuptial day. When your hearts, as bride and groom, 
are coupled, may your happy loves sail proudly on the wings 
of joy, without the simplest wind of adverse life to annoy your 
peace. When you receive her to your bosom, let her have 
your whole heart, for she will be a meet spouse. Her home 
will be Paradise, her love heaven. And thus I issue here my 
warrant of respect for two combined hearts, together knit with 
the golden thread of love. 

“Still your true friend, 

“James Ballon.” 

Morris did not inform his affianced until later, of this piece 
of James’s, not desirous to divert her attention at this delight- 


244 


ful hour. The two espoused were enveloped in a blossom of 
rapture and haloed in heavenly thoughts. 

Love is the wisdom of the heart. It is wisdom when heart 
congratulates heart, and love love conquers ; and the wisdom 
of that love was Mary’s Parnassus and Morris’s Helicon. 
Their love was the love of loves — anthems of the soul. So 
when all was in readiness, Morris and Mary were soon made 
one, the serious, sober clergyman uniting their future exist- 
ence. ' 

The marriage was conducted very simply, as the table was 
not sumptuous, nor was there an extravagance of apparel. 
The bride was not attired in a rich array of finery, but was 
clothed in a habit of snowy white and looked a veritable 
Jerusalem lily. Morris wore a plain suit of black. 

The bride, while being encircled by Hymen’s vows, had 
paled effectually, but now she blushed a damask crimson. 
Her breast was supplied with new life, her eyes with fresh 
lustre, her countenance with renewed pleasantness, her voice 
with loftier sentiment. 

The afternoon was assisted through by the tide of enjoy- 
ment. It wa? a revival of happiness, of love’s bright life, of 
two lovers lovingly loving. Beauty, the food, and smiles 
the wine of love, our newly married couple furnished forth 
to the wedding banquet bountifully. They had relief in their 
minds, peace in their hearts, heaven in their souls. Their 
ecstacy was equal to their proud position. They- were as happy 
as a pair of doves in springtime, or two white swans on the 
Jungfrau. Their hearts beat in unison the tattoo of affection 
and fidelity. 

As they had now embarked on the voyage of matrimony 
they received the plaudits of their friends. Night partly 
wasted, the assemblage of friends dispersed to their homes. 
And now the prologue ended, the play ' on the stage of life 
was just enacting. The voice of the bridegroom, the voice of 
the bride, and the voice of gladness resounded throughout 


245 


the mansion. Their post-nuptial rejoicing was calm, loving, 
divine ; their honeymoon endearing. Morris, as a neogamist, 
was more sublime than Morris as an affianced; and Mary, as 
a newly wedded bride, was more radiant that Mary as an 
espoused. Morris was a benedict royally proud of his better 
half. Their fresh faces, fresh hearts, fresh voices, and newly 
washed souls, were linked in the admiration of each other s 
loves. The young husband was handsome, gentle, command- 
ing ; the young wife was beautiful, tender, submissive. He 
loved his wife with all his bosom, and with all his power, and 
with all his life ; and she worshipped her husband with all her 
joy, and with all her peace, and with all her love. She was a 
seraph as pure as a swan, he was a phoenix as spotless as an 
ermine. 

Now, after the passing of several weeks, the Felton house- 
hold had decreased. Amos had gone ; at least, he had disap- 
peared. All .believed that he, like Morris, had recourse to 
temporary self banishment, tormented by his intimacy with 
Ruth Maybloom, while Morris alone, hearing Amos in one 
of his soliloquies, knew his unquiet conscience the result of his 
feelings towards his own return. He would -thus claim his 
lawful portion of the estate and wealth, as we know Morris 
was also sharer to the father’s riches. Morris thought time 
would drain this trouble from his fitful brother. During that, 
period Ruth was also ceased to be loved by Amos, whose 
furious love of wealth had murdered his love of love. Her 
jilted love, her sorrow, her faux pas, her distraction, — that 
apoplexy of grief — led her to her suicide. 

But clouds do not long withhold the sunshine. One soon 
forgets the sorrows of others. Morris and Mary were impli- 
cated each in the other’s good fortune. Through their hearts 
flowed their bounding blood in full, and within their souls 
rang the cadenzes of joy and delight. The adversities that 
had annoyed them almost to their death, were now smoothed 
over with the oil of joy. Mary was gaining in health and 


246 


strength and freshness, and was again attaining her former 
loveliness and fulness of form. The dawn of day rose again 
to gild her lily cheeks ; her face began to amplify in plumpness ; 
her dimmed eyes were searching for their lost lustre. Her 
heart began to rejoice with song and dance, her joyful lips 
imparted words of merit. 

The two elderly women, Mrs. Felton and Mrs. Ogden, were 
fairly associated. Their kindly intercourse touched mostly on 
the Holy Bible, that volume for the aged, jewel of religion, 
heaven’s gift to earth, supreme of Elzevirs, sweet medicine 
of the Great Physician and the soul’s good health. They 
drank deep of its consoling waters, and were stimulated by its 
revelation. They dwelt together in happiness and peace ; their 
habitation was not all their home ; the greater portion was 
the Lord, in whom they lived and trusted. They had all 
their lives resorted and confided to Him in trouble and afflic- 
tion. 

Mrs. Felton was inwardly much pained, however, regarding 
her son’s dire mishap, although she commented not upon this 
theme. 

The wain of time had two summers rolled his daily wheels 
across the concave top of heaven. Autumn had just entered 
upon the scene, and husband and wife, on a sunny Sabbath — 
the second anniversary of their wedding — were alone in the 
room, and in silence perusing. The wife finally closed her 
volume, and went to her husband, sit upon his knee, encircled 
his neck with enticing affection’s arms, and riveted her mel- 
low lips upon his cheeks in blissful kiss. 

“How sweet it is to be circled with the marriage wreath,” 
she gently said. “It gives one the wages of content.” 

“It is the proudest ornament to grace the life of man, the 
richest legacy of heaven to woman,” he returned. 

The wife smiled pleased and followed : 

“True, and when two in true affection dwell, the burden of 
a solitary life is removed. And when I think of James, the 


247 


forceful pleader for my hand and heart, and the pain and tor- 
ture he endured by my refusal, I recognize in human nature 
the eager longing for connubial companionship. It moves me 
even now to see him in my memory as I saw him with my 
eyes-, for his heart seemed to be swimming in his soul, with 
his soul hung upon his face, too deep with love for sounding. 
But James is provided now, and is cheerful, successful and 
contented.’^ 

The wife rose from his knee and drew a chair, seating her- 
self close by his side. 

“Though numerous many may be Psyches having dewy love 
sipped from their lips, yet ordinary many never attain the 
happy realms of a Niobe,” the husband imagined. “And when 
I recall to memory the immortal Byron, that English marvel, 
far-sighted literateur, magician of romantic poetry, the wild 
Byron, the bold Byron of a Byronic home, I peruse the 
couplet : 

“Man’s love is of itself a thing apart, 

’Tis woman’s whole existence.” 

Those words may note Byron’s swift experience, but others 
may be costumed with experience like, or equal to, his, that 
are unable to express that experience like Byron, yet may 
feel it. When a man concentrates his full gaze of love upon 
a woman, it is not easily relinquished. Such is my experi- 
ence, inasmuch as I was martyr to my love. Therefore, he 
who has a wealth of love running in his veins, and bestows it 
upon one only woman, his lottery of thought, it will not be 
of itself a thing apart, but he, apart from her, will be a cring- 
ing slave to his passion. And now, my being married, my 
wife will be the nurse of my prosperity if prosperity be mine; 
if I can ever kiss the mouth of fortune, it will happen so by the 
splendid fortune of my kissing my wife’s mouth. He has a 
just and noble wife that is satisfied, and seeing I am twice 
over satisfied, my wife is doubly just and noble.” 


248 


The conversation was interrupted by the mothers of the 
author and authoress of this dialogue, who had returned 
from a walk in the laden orchard, which, at this season, was 
a perfect Araby of perfumes — fruit, the very attar-of-roses to 
the palate. 

Four years from Morris’s marriage, his mother died, as- 
sisted to her grave by cares, and was solemnly laid to rest. 
Her surmise was sadly felt and much lamented over. Four 
years more, and Mary’s mother also had balanced her life’s 
account, and a sacred place in the cemetery was also laid aside 
for her. She was long remembered ; both mothers were living 
long in the memories of their children. 

And life and time continued for our heroine and hero still. 
Morris was a hero in labor, honesty, strength, and intelli- 
gence; Mary was a heroine in duty, neatness, elegance, and 
kindness. They had now attained the very top of life’s suc- 
cess, and faced the very capital and welfare of society, and 
stood in the meridian of beauty, usefulness and age. 

At this juncture of their lives an extraordinary man made 
with them his home for a season. 


249 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


’“a most incomparable man.'' 

Almost had the elapse of half a score of years succored 
Morris Felton and the partner of his thrift. And it was late 
in March ; the weather was cold, stormy, disagreeble. Morris 
Felton had been to the city and was returning home, the even- 
ing not far distant. When within a mile of his home, he 
descried a man, who, from his build, he fancied a sort of 
modern Goliath. This quidam paused, as Morris overtook him, 
and solicited his audience, as he intended either to impart in- 
formation, or desired to obtain intelligence regarding the 
community. Perhaps he was on a visit to some relations or 
friends? Morris did not know. A large portmanteau he car- 
ried with him, which reminded Morris of his own journey 
divers years before. 

“This is cold," the stranger said. 

Morris was startled. That deep, sonorous voice almost ter- 
rified him. “It is quite unpleasant," returned he. 

“I am a traveler and a stranger to this ground," remarked 
the individual. “I labor as I journey for expenses, and the 
ready fund of my purse sinking, it now needs mending. I 
want to put money in my sack, exchanging for it labor. Can 
you direct me where this I can accomplish?" 

Morris still observed the stranger closely, and, in turn, the 
stranger measured Morris. 

“To what trade do you adhere?" inquired Morris. “What 
line of labor do you most pursue?" 

“I work whatever work is given me to work. I fit myself 
to any avocation ; this or that ; no choice is my choice.” 


250 


I Morris’s first impulse prompted him to reject this applicant 
I for labor, owing to his appearance ; but in general conversation 
I he proved himself a splendid monstrosity of the human race. 

“I can share with you,” said Morris, finally. “I can accom- 
modate a man, having need of assistance.” 

“State your conditions !” the stranger followed. 

While Morris was suggesting his terms the auditor heark- 
ened to the proponent. The stranger assenting and the agree- 
ment clinched, the two drove together to Morris’s place of 
residence. 

This curious stranger made himself acquainted as Emanuel 
Goddart, subsequently known as Mone, an appellation 
awarded to him by his friends, while in the employ of Morris 
Felton. He was almost as far from the setting of life’s age, as 
he was from the rising of life’s age, his life’s timepiece having 
stricken forty-four. The greater portion of his journey lay 
behind him. He was a tremendous man, robust, with muscles 
of iron and tendons of steel. His head was a sphere of Nes- 
torian roundness, prickly with a dense pampas of hair, grisly, 
close and short. His bristling hair, his beetling brows, like 
, brother windrows of thorns, his severe black eyes — living 
coals of fire, — and his cyclopic look, at first indulgence, bathed 
the observer in a reservoir of fear. That hypnotic gaze fas- 
cinated one. But once familiar with him, those apprehen- 
sions were dispersed. He was a circumterraneous mortal, as 
he had several times circumnavigated, and had dwelt in nearly 
all sections of the world. He was a nomad of the Caucasian 
race; his arena was the world, the world his volume. He 
read the world as a minister his Bible, and his texts were de- 
rived from the earth. He recognized God in nature as the 
clergy perceive God in the Bible. He was the calendar of 
travel, the encyclopaedia of voyages. He sowed to the winds 
of excursions and reaped the whirlwinds of peregrinations. 
The world was a forest for this great and wonderful wan- 
derer. His physiognomy was striking — a visnomy not soon 


251 


to be forgotten. He was ugly; in fine, he was hideous to a 
new observer, but the color of his voice seemed to beautify 
his face. Words were his cosmetics ; his patchouly was his 
gift of speech. He was a giant in stature and robustness, and 
also in amity and love — only dwarfed in all that’s mean. The 
children saw Gulliver in him, on his shoulders the epaulette 
of strength, on his feet the sandals of a firm foundation ; they 
fancied him a Giant Despair of some Doubting Castle. He 
used to say : “The Lord has tethered me upon the wide pasture 
of the world; I am his obedient sheep, he my kind and sym- 
pathetic shepherd.” Then he would smile, but laugh, never. 
His arms laced in steel and brazen biceps, his hirsute breast 
padded with muscles of leather, and his caoutchouc calves, 
seconded his strength, and made him a Briareus of labor. In 
constitution, he was brother to the rock, and the vicissitude 
of climates had wrought him as coarse-featured as an Indian, 
as rugged as Switzerland. On one occasion, while in the em- 
ploy of Morris Felton, he was seen to hoist upon his Her- 
culanean shoulders, four bushels of wheat ; and on another oc- 
casion, to sustain and convey upon those Atlas shoulders, 
across the threshing floor, three sacks of wheat, consisting of 
nine bushels, the sacks placed in conformable position by his 
co-laborers. For work, he had the gift of him who cleansed 
the Augean stables. He was ambidextrous — using either hand 
with equal vim. He was considered a mysterious man; no 
one knew where he was born ; he never gave information con- 
cerning himself, save to expound his memoirs of travel. An- 
other singular circumstance was that every tooth in his head 
was a bicuspid or molar — a double tooth — and he possessed a 
grip superior. He had the gripe of a lion, the hunger of a 
wolverine, the digestion of a wolf, the stomach of an ostrich. 
Emanuel Goddart was a confirmed misogamist. Once he 
was heard to say : “Marriage is a prison, bachelorhood a free- 
dom.” He did not reject the fair and softer sex, but loved, 
occasionally, to look upon them, and even to converse with 


252 


them, afhrm their sentiments. As sober as a judge, as shrewd 
as a caliph, as contented as a Nabob, as frank as an Arabian, 
as undaunted as a Spartan, as judicious as a Nestor, this 
marvel of flesh and blood was ever found to be, and never 
deviating from his habit. To him the revenues of death 
balanced the avenues of life. A death occurring in the neigh- 
borhood, brought from him this exclamation : ‘Tt is weakness 
in one to fear death, knowing it is a necessary end to all life, 
coming sometime, somehow, somewhere ; yet there is no living 
thing, however great, however small, that will not fight or flee 
when danger is imminent, or blanch at death when death ex- 
pected is.” 

One day during the month of July, a chilly rain was falling. 
Outside labor was impeded, the fields deserted, the roads 
vacant, the landscape lonely; men were confined beneath their 
roofs for shelter. On this gloomy day, IMorris Felton and 
Emanuel Goddart repaired to the cellar beneath the house, 
and betook themselves to a drier labor there. In that sub- 
terranean chamber were stored the preceding year’s potatoes, 
which farinaceous tubers they were preparing for market. 

As it progressed toward evening, the day waxed darker, 
heavier, gloomier, and the cellar was filling with a tide of 
darkness. 

Emanuel, who had been exceedingly industrious through- 
out the day, and who was, perhaps, in their moments of silence, 
ruminating over his past and future travels paid but little at- 
tention to this underground storehouse. But Mone stood now 
erect, his long continued stooping posture necessitating that 
position. Seizing the advantage of this respite, he inspected 
the interior of the repository. He was taking a neorama of 
this subterranean cavern. 

While he was thus surveying, his attention was arrested 
to a particular corner, which he scrutinized carefully. In said 
corner a double wall, or a structure of stone resembling a 
section of wall about eight feet in length, was erected by the 


253 


interior side of, and of a height corresponding with the real 
foundation wall. It was this portion of masonary — this un- 
necessary portion — that captured Mone’s vivid eye, as he 
readily observed that this additional work of masonry was 
useless, having, undoubtedly, been erected ulterior to the real 
structure or foundation. He also recognized that this second 
wall could be removed without endamaging the house or outer 
wall. Thus the longer he gazed, the tighter his grasp of sight 
seemed to concentrate in that especial spot ; his flashing eye 
became riveted to that hypnotic corner. 

At that moment Morris looked up and beheld Mone in a 
paroxysm of horror. This man was standing there paralyzed, 
his gaze as stiff as the stonelike stare of a gorgon, his stubbly, 
spiky hair standing erect like a prickly porcupine, and his 
muscles macadamized. He was gazing Sphinx-like into that 
especial corner, as though perusing some strategy which that 
angle of the cellar sheltered. He was growing horrible, his 
eyes flaring, his visnomy turning to an ashy paleness. Morris 
endeavored to draw his attention elsewhere, he had not heard ; 
he spoke a second time, and Emanuel relaxed his gaze, re- 
suming his labor. Occasionally he half turned as if to gaze 
again in that direction. Some spell or incantation must have 
rested in that angle, or some past catastrophe must have oc- 
curred there, which hallucination had, perhaps, arisen to steal 
this man’s indifference. 

Morris was greatly affected by that circumstance, and long 
remembered that conspicuous figure, buried in that absorbing 
stare, and mantled in that cloud of horror. He afterwards 
prevented this man from entering the cellar. 

Weeks rolled away until November came, when Emanuel 
Goddart took his departure, to disappear from Morris’s 
knowledge forever. 


254 


CHAPTER XXXIL 


THE RIDER OF THE PALE HORSE. 

Emanuel Goddart disappeared as mysteriously as he 
had come. He had advanced on his journey for new regions 
to explore. Having gone, Morris’s wife once remarked : 

‘T was lost in attention to the stories of his adventures.” 

Morris smiled at this humorous thought of his wife. 

“So it was possible for you to recognize in him an Othello ?” 
he returned. 

■ Twelve years of wedded life brought no little bright-eyed, 
rosy-cheeked children — happiest flowers to one’s life and sweet- 
est treasures of one’s heart — to enrich and enliven their man- 
sion. The loving wife would occasionally, in the sweetness of 
her peace and joy, weep tears of pity over their childless home. 
No sweet little images of herself sported in the halls and cham- 
bers and parlors, romped in gleeful noise in their pastimes, 
or gamboled on the grassy lawns beneath the trees. 

One Sabbath both husband and wife were sitting in the 
shade of a cherry tree. The wife had entered one of her 
reveries. Finally, looking up, she said: 

“My kind, dear husband, why does not God present to us 
a lovely darling?” 

“If it be the will of Providence, our house shall yet be re- 
enforced with one or more of Nature’s favorites. Heaven 
may be observant to our prayers with time, and furnish us a 
jewel by which our joy and comfort may be perfected. Be- 
cause none such has come as yet to bless us is no fault of 
ours.” 

“Such a tender ornament makes home lovelier, life brighter, 


255 


love grander, parents happier, and fills the world with a 
denser radiance and splendor,” the wife comprehended. 

Nothing more was said bearing upon this subject. 

Once, when in the city, Morris Felton and his wife stopped 
before the well arranged windows of a studio of art. Here 
the wife’s eyes fell upon a more elevating engraving in that 
gorgeous galaxy of portraits. It led her memory backward 
through the dozen years of married life. Tears invaded the 
soft heavens of her eyes. She was contemplating the picture 
of the Madonna and the Christ child. 

'‘O, happy mother!” she thought. That brow, that look, 
that appearance, that pose; that face beautiful with thought, 
those eyes beaming with sweetness, that heart tender with 
love, that mother filled with holiness, that child the angel of 
his mother’s caressing arms; that heavenly picture — jewel of 
earth’s exalted praise — transported the absorbed wife into the 
realms of reflection, the Paradise of angelic love. 

How she would have loved to hold within her arms, a 
sweet little blossom of the human plant, and gently press it to 
her bosom; how she would have loved to have one of its 
dimpled arms clinging round her neck, and feel its cherry lips 
and boneless gums attached to her snowy breast ; how she 
would have loved to look upon its chubby little arms and 
fleshy hands and chunky thighs, its round, plump body, and 
its smiling face and eyes; how she would have loved to hold 
within her hands its tender, wee wristlets and fingerlets, while 
gently rubbing on her cheks its rows of lily knucklets ! She 
would have resided in earth’s cherished heaven — a heaven 
consecrated to God. As it was, she was dissatisfied that she 
should live, a pilgrim through life, childless, pass beyond, and 
leave the world no copy of herself. 

Some months subsequent to this occurrence, the husband 
was perusing in the Bible. He was interested in the descrip- 
tion of the Psalms, and chanced upon this paragraph : “Thy 
wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house : thy 


256 


children like the olive plants round about thy table.” He 
ceased reading, and reflected, but withheld the passage from 
the wife ; she would have wept over such a clause ; she would 
have lost the mistress of herself. 

Mrs. Mary Felton, at the age of thirty-three was as patient 
and beautiful as ever, but was unconscious of her beauty. One 
cannot, really, perceive the beauty of her face, or the soft- 
ness of her eyes, hear the nature of her voice, nor feel the 
eflfect of her generosity, any more than one can see the love 
within her heart, or hear the thought of her mind. One is 
deaf to the manner of her own speech and blind to her own 
charms, which are reflected only by others in the shape of 
mirrors. 

Mrs. Felton was also a queen of domiculture; her throne 
was the household — the position of a wife. 

Day followed day, week week, month month, and year year. 
Morris Felton was flourishing. Prosperity was unrolling be- 
fore him. Morris the philomath was now the coherent think- 
er ; he had acquired an opulent polymathy of the world ; he 
had become a millionaire in happiness. He was the possessor 
of the three H. H. H.'s that make a man happy — health, holi- 
ness, and a headpiece. He was the Lycurgus of his com- 
munity. He was mighty in deed as well as in word, always a 
man of honest report, and pondered the hearts of men. He 
was the north star of uprightness; he was more; he was the 
aurora in the northern sky of principle. 

Morris Felton was not a demagogue, and sought not for 
the spoils of office. He was, nevertheless, appointed to the 
position of school trustee, which office he maintained for a 
period of ten years ; and was also elected as Congressman to 
Washington two consecutive terms from his respective district. 
While there, he acquitted himself agreeably, and had entered 
on a liberal course of fame, never selling his reputation in any 
act of bribery, but was always seasoned to honorable duty. 
The contact of this distinguished legislator insured a higher 


9 


257 


grade of justice, and wherever his presence was felt, a thrill 
of affection pervaded the arteries of humanity. 

His second term of office completed, he refused all further 
solicitations to office from his fellow-citizens, and retired to 
his farm. The cornucopia of abundance smiled over his 
plenteous acres, and he knew the art of drawing happiness 
out of the ground. Thus year after year he continued on ; he 
bought and sold, purchased and retailed, gave and received, 
planted and gathered, sowed and reaped, labored, reposed, 
studied, loved, educated, advanced, conquered. 

Through their journey down the slope of years, the husband 
and wife had always been happy and benevolent. Age was 
now written on their brows, and with the stealthy step of time, 
a change in the family was conceded. Morris was alone. His 
helpmeet was swallowed up in the quicksands of this life. 
The partner of his bosom was separated from him; her soul 
had crossed the great divide, and her remains had been con- 
signed to a final place beneath the roses and the sod. This in- 
terruption in his life induced many brave and manly tears of 
love to flow, as he was big with lamentation, so involved was 
he in grief at the loss of his companion. She was stricken 
with sixty years when struck with death, and though a Niobe 
in wish, she was none in reality. 

Several years more had taken their stolen departure from 
the door of Time. Morris Felton was ascending the snowy 
summit of seniority — the Tacoma of sixty-eight, — and was 
yet attending to the duties of agronomy. Snow was on his 
head, blossoms on his cheeks, sunshine in his heart, heaven 
in his soul; age, health, happiness, religion, were the sum of 
his maturing years. In this midst, the shades of night began 
to glide across the evening sunlight of his life. Illness began 
to knock at the door of health, sickness began to assail his 
system ; the grim eye of death began to witness his lifers de- 
cline. 

One afternoon of a melancholy day in January, auspicious 


258 


clouds were collecting, and as the vapory canopy denser 
grew, it emasculated the diurnal radiance. For several days 
the weather had been inclement. The air was still; all was 
serene, noiseless, and at rest. Nature was not dead, but sleep- 
ing ; wrapped in lethargy, like the dormant serpent or the torpid 
frog. Towards evening flakes of snow began to descend. As 
the night was falling, the landscape, already quilted with a 
previous precipitation, was replenished with a fresh foliage. 
There was no aroma emanating from the efflorescence of 
plants ; no summer carols from throats of feathered linguists ; 
no glistening wings of filmy butterflies, pollen-powdered bees, 
or gairish other swarms of painted revelers of air; no plaintive 
chirp of the nocturnal cricket ; no rattling rustle of the bladed 
corn, or dry, autumnal leaves ; no star-emblazoned sky or 
placid moon. The snow bird was seeking shelter from the 
snow and night, the partridge was whirling his rapid flight 
toward security, the screeching owl — indolent plumiped of 
night — was aroused with the dusk, and the leveret was de- 
livered from his burrow. The brinks of fountains frescoed 
with frostwork; the rivulets grotesque with snow and ice; 
the brooks concealed beneath huge mounds of snow ; the ponds 
sheeted with glassy floors of ice ; the fields slumbering under- 
neath their garb of snow ; the valleys devastated of their ver- 
dure; the leafless trees etched with freezing frost and snow; 
almost all terrestrial object.s were newly covered with this 
fresh mantle from the skies — winter^s robe of charity. 

The deep of night was hastening on. The sky was black 
and dark, the earth white and light. The incessant snow wai 
deepening, as the precipitation continued into the night, and 
such a night, a soft, serene night, a night favorable for a spot- 
less soul to take celestial flight, journeying through that vir- 
tuous and fantastic shower. As the fourth watch of the night 
was ushered in, Morris Felton had fallen asleep ; it was his 
final sleep. His spirit had taken its exit from the proscenium 
of life, following that of his silenced consort. 


259 


In the morning Aurora gracefully withdrew the curtains 
from the east, and ruddy Phoebus ventured forth, in a sea of 
blue, smiling upon a world of white. Within the mansion 
reflected upon our mind's eye, lay the soulless remains of 
Morris Felton, cadaverous as the fallen snow. 

A few days subsequently, in a reserved portion of the 
cemetery, a fresh grave was recognizable beside one of former 
construction, which was shrouded with a chaste pall of snow, 
suitable for the pure memory beneath. Husband and wife, 
hero and heroine, sainted souvenirs of remembrance, were 
reposing in their final bed of slumber. 

As a final word of praise, or tribute to this man, an extract 
by one of the ministers in his funeral sermon was this : 

“The deceased before us in this coffin for interment,, was 
upright from the morn of existence to the eve of age; from 
the ripening of spring, to the decaying autumn; from the 
January of hope, to the December of Jesus' love; from the 
Sunday gospel of prayer, to Saturday's tired age; from the 
port of active life, to the harbor of death. By the edict of his 
affections, he won the hearts of all and defeated every ob- 
stacle to right. He sought to place upon the heads of all his 
friends, a diadem of honor, a tiara of love, an aureole of pa- 
tience. His sympathy was inextinguished throughout the span 
of his successful life; and his benignancy was an amaranth 
which never faded. His philanthrophy was a far greater 
monument than marble can venerate. This man, living, was 
illustrious; dead, he is renowned; he has passed away only 
to be remembered. And thus from his life can we infer the 
weight of popularity of him whose corpse we shortly will 
consign to Mother Earth." 

The sermon on this occasion, was a precious meed paid to 
the deceased. 

With Morris Felton's death, the last member of the Felton 
family was removed. 


260 


CHAPTER XXXIIL 


LIGHT OUT OF DARKNESS. 

Morris Felton died intestate. He also died childless, with 
no blooming offspring as apprentice to his good name; no 
posterity succeeded to his inheritance. His most adjacent re- 
lations termed him uncle, and others cousin. And since no 
testament had been prepared or filed by the deceased, these 
relatives had resolved to dispose of the property, and dis- 
tribute according to their status of kinship. 

A day of sale was advertised, an early day in the younger 
part of March singled out for the occurrence. Men of place, 
men of honor, men of condition, men of power, perused these 
silent announcem^ents, and favored them with much con- 
sideration? Men of standing, meeting, would converse upon 
the publication of the estate, ripe for auction, regarding its 
fertile soil, its abundant acres, its ample crops, its agreeable 
surroundings, and its connections with the city. 

The day arrived. People thronged the premises of the 
Felton place. Men of influence, men of honesty, men of 
dignity, men of many-sided views were there, and several pur- 
chasers were among the assembled scores ; but as the gavel 
of the auctioneer descended for the last time, the demesne was 
expedited into the possession of one who was comparatively 
a stranger. So the house was no longer owned by the pa- 
tronym of Felton, but was now under the surveillance of an- 
other. This individual was a wealthy magnate in real estate, 
who had amassed a considerable bulk of the filthy lucre. The 
purpose of his purchase was to invest his surplus of gold, 
and, by rental compensation, augment his investment. 


261 


Two weeks posterior to the vendue, had one passed by the 
estate so recently transferred to another’s possession, he would 
have descried new countenances about the premises. The 
unfamiliar faces proved that strangers inhabited the place. 
They had leased the farm from the purchaser for two years. 

The tinkling voices of children were heard there now ; the 
shouts of laughtex; the thrills of joy; the bursts of song; the 
emotions of childhood; and the sobs and cries and brawls of 
infancy. The pastimes, the rejoicing, the gambols of this 
cordon of children enkindled the sparks of love, and encourag- 
ed the warmth of contentment. For a generation, the tumult 
of cheer, and the uproar of gayety; or, rather, the hubbub of 
quarreling childhood were unheard, the occupants of the home 
remaining childless. 

The two years ended, the tenants were persuaded, by a 
call to the city, to abandon the pursuits of agriculture, and 
another family, less extensive in numbers, succeeded to the 
domain. Success blazed moderately before them, flushing 
their purse and warming their hearts. A triumvirate of years 
enabled them to hoard a liberal supply. This hou^hold re- 
moved to a distant community and still another, the parents 
nearing the Thibet of age, followed to this property. 

This couple were the head of a numerous lineage, all of 
mature age, of which some were enthroned to labor at home, 
some were married, some dead. They were a peaceable peo- 
ple, industrious, celebrated for their love and candor, and 
moderately well to do, being industrious on these fertile acres. 

Spring had passed, summer had passed, autumn had passed, 
winter was passing. February assented to a huge fall of 
snow, accompanied with storm, and monstrous drifts obstruct 
ed the highways for several days. Travel was again resumed. 

One intensely cold, transparent evening, the gruff a<nd 
surly blasts were resounding without. The white carpet lay 
outstretched upon the earth ; blushing Luna — mistress of 
dark — was slowly climbing upward on the eastern sky; the 


262 


branching silhouettes of trees were proportioned on the earth’s 
white surface in spectral apparitions; the firmament was 
decorated with millions of stars — Night’s choice diamonds — 
which the moon was sinking into the endless depths; and the 
deserted, melancholy, and snow-piled roads were distinguish- 
able from windowed mansions. It was a day-spring issuing 
from the night — a Danae shower of the golden flood. 

During this evening the members of the household were 
grouped around the fireside. The clock was after eight. Sud- 
denly, in the midst of a space of silence within, a knock was 
heard upon the door. The youngest son, a bold, stout, sociable 
and humorous young man, responded to the rap, unbarred 
the door, and a stranger entered. 

This stranger was in all his lineaments a human wonder. 
The unexpected entrance of such a being was a surprisal to 
the family. The intruder was as much astonished as the 
household were amazed, as he cautiously inspected the room 
and its occupants, and uttered never a syllable. The resi- 
dents did not look at this unknown; they gazed. What had 
aroused this giant from his hibernacle ? He was about eighty, 
possessing fervent black eyes, long, coarse, silvered hair, a 
weather-beaten countenance, a colossal head of pumpkin mold, 
formidable shoulders, great hands completed with corky digits, 
and wearing a large, broad-brimmed hat, and a corduroy suit 
that corresponded to his build. 

“It would be my pleasure to tarry through the night,” began 
this ermine-haired Colossus. “Can you in your worship’s 
moods, or simply out of kindness, provide a place for me?” 

The stranger spoke in a sonorous voice, nervous and slow, 
indicative of a ripeness of age. After some hesitation, the 
lady of the house, remarked : 

“Our hearts are willing and our natures are inclined to give 
you accommodations, but, truly, conditions will not permit.” 

He circumnavigated the room again with his eyes. 

“So you cannot favor me to-night with lodging?” he re- 
turned. 


263 


The patriarch of the household now volunteered to speak. 

“It grieves us that we are not prepared to do justice to a 
benighted traveler/’ he said. “We could not content you with 
our humble accommodations.” 

The man seemed satisfied, and with a cordial leave, de- 
parted. The members of the family indulged in queries touch- 
ing this individual. 

Three minutes after his departure, and while the inmates 
of the house were engaged in conversation, another rap at the 
door was heard, and, without assistance, the same visitor re- 
entered. 

“Can you inform me where one might procure a weary 
day’s repose?” he inquired. 

“There lies a small village eastward from here, about a 
mile, where convenience can be acquired,” the bold son di- 
rected. 

With this information, the man again went forth. 

A few minutes afterward, he returned the third time and 
without knocking entered again. The household began to 
grow uneasy, but the queer visitor inquiringly began : 

“Can I buy some one’s courage of this house to accompany 
me to the garret? I will, when there, relate the purpose of 
my adventure.” 

It was not easy to purchase the services of the family. They 
supposed he was weighing some strategy in his brains. 
Finally, the two sons, out of curiosity, assented to administer 
to the requirements of this curious stranger. They procured 
a lantern. They scaled the stairs. The man of age and 
size and strength and mystery followed. Having reached the 
attic, this human query directed them to a special corner of 
the apartment near the slooping roof. Then striking the 
floor upon a certain spot with his staff, he said : 

“Down in the cellar from this point you will unearth wealth ; 
for the digging it is yours.” 

They then descended in silence, the man of mystery leading. 


264 


Not a word was spoken. Arriving in the kitchen, the stranger 
again interfered. 

“Now follow me to the cellar.” 

This wiseacre was becoming more and more like an ap- 
parition; and they began to fancy they were being led about 
the habitation by some spectre or empiric. 

The Herculean figure descended, to the cellar in advance, 
the sons following puzzled. He led to the locality designated 
from the garret, and smiting the clay, as he had the garret 
floor, in a place approximate to the angle of the foundation 
wall, he ejaculated in a muffled tone : 

“There! You will discover something there, or near.” 

The brothers glanced at his physiognomy, and were ex- 
cited. He was livid, trembling, his black eyes wild and vivid ; 
he appeared terrified. His fright frightened the brothers, 
who, hastening the ordeal, re-ascended the stairs with the 
unknown participant of the evening, when he pre- 
cipitately withdrew with his former civility, departing into 
the winter’s desert of snow. He had succeeded in alarming 
the residents. 

The reader undoubtedly recalls to memory a character 
similar to this man of numerous Februarys, whose life we 
have partly delineated in a preceding chapter. It is the unique 
personage, who had labored with Morris Felton in that same 
subterannean chamber almost thirty years before ; it is the 
same individual whose staring eyeballs glowed with lively 
flames at a previous period in that same cellar, facing that 
same angle ; it is Mone ; it is Emanuel Goddart clothed in age. 

This knight of travel was now a pilgrim of the staff. What 
a transformation in this mortal? He appeared like a ghost, 
from behind the upholstery of the past. Since his separation 
with Morris Felton, he had navigated over the world and 
almost through life. He had resolved, while passing through 
the city, to visit his old familiar friend of years ago ; and not 
finding him, he revealed, as he supposed, a secret of that 


265 


cellar. His former experience there, haunted him; it was an 
oasis in his memory. Henceforward, all trace of this miracu- 
lous man was lost. 

This incident was a dilemma to the members of the house- 
hold. It set the wheels of wonder working. This intruder 
appeared and disappeared like a cyclone ; he came like a 
vision, and went like a dream. They even imagined they were 
visited by a phantom man. 

As the evening progressed, the mother of the home re- 
marked ; 

“It is singular, and the occurrence agitates me much. I 
myself, for some time past, have experienced sensations of 
horror arising from that portion of the cellar. It interferes 
with my labors, as I dare not glance in that direction, yet have 
never expressed my feelings on the subject.” 

But as they longed not to imbibe of superstition, they re- 
solved to drop the matter, and the event gradually began to 
pale from their memories. The flow of the seasons continued, 
until the arrival of August’s sultry sunshine. The fields gave 
promise of an extensive crop, and an additional crib for the 
corn was necessary. 

“Where can stone for the foundation be obtained?” the 
father inquired of his sons. 

After reflecting, the younger son replied : 

“Silas Risenhouse can quarry them for us.” 

“I would make use of that extra section of masonry in the 
cellar,” the elder son suggested. “It is of no benefit there 
and we can economize thereby.” 

This they concluded the better plan. They consulted the 
owner of the estate and he consented. 

A day appeared bringing rain, which checked outside labor. 
On that day the brothers entered the cellar to demolish the 
unnecessary wall of masonry. It was hastily reduced, and in 
two hours several perch of stone were in a condition for future 
utility. While gathering the scraps and fragments of stone 


266 


and mortar, an object, buried beneath the foundation just 
removed, was noticed protruding from the earth. It was a 
shoe, a leather shoe, a formidable shoe — a shoe by which the 
human foot is shod. An investigation was begun, and this 
pedal appendage was found to be attached to something re- 
sembling a cylinder, and of a nacreous color. The entire dis- 
covery was unearthed; it was a cluster of human bones; a 
frightful skeleton, with its ghastly skull, was there. A human 
being of flesh and blood, as they supposed, had been interred 
there, and was now disinterred a repelling skeleton. 

When was the corpse deposited there ? Who was it ? How 
long was it there entombed? That was the enigma. 

News of the discovery spread, the gossips and the babbling 
sea of people visiting the house to gratify their curiosity. 

Rumor was abroad in the full dress of a witch. Those 
motionless bones propelled once a moving and a living being. 
But who was that person while within the periphery of life? 
The oldest inhabitants conversed together and were consulted. 
The sexagenarians, septuagenarians, and octogenarians, ex- 
pressed their intelligence relative to the Feltons who had in- 
herited the estate through several generations. They recalled 
to mind one Amos Felton, youngest son of Cyrus Felton, 
who had so strangely disappeared some fifty years in the 
past, and began to associate this skeleton with his mystery. 
They also remembered how the elder brother, the late Morris 
Felton, had vanished and remained from home that ternion of 
years preceding Amos’s removal. People conversed vigor- 
ously upon this epidemic of disappearance which had attacked 
the Felton household ; it was, for a while, the sensation of the 
neighborhood. Morris Felton had evaded home, and after 
three years, reappeared ; Amos Felton had forsaken his pa- 
ternal precincts, whose return was never accomplished. They 
remembered the sorrows of these brothers. 

The popular opinion of the community was that Amos Felton 
was so overwhelmed with grief, that he gave himself silently 


267 


up in suicide, perhaps, by hanging, and was secretly concealed 
beneath the house; and that the remains deciphered the enig- 
ma of Amos Felton’s whereabouts. All believed it certainly 
to have been Amos Felton’s skeleton that was exhumed from 
its ossuary. 

After this discovery, several days went by, and the dawn 
of a new discovery arose. Supernatural noises were now heard 
in that house, singular sounds were distinguished there. 
Imaginations of ghosts terrified the residents. “Haunted 
house” began to be noised around, night’s molested circulated 
through the community. “That habitation is the abode of 
spooks,” passing people would often proclaim. It was looked 
upon as a house ravished by invisible Ariels. They fancied 
that hob-goblins frequented that house, and held their con- 
claves there; that elfs abounded in that domicile, and played 
their pranks there; that gnomes assembled in that dwelling, 
and sought their stolen prey there ; that spirits scoured through 
that habitation, and discharged their gambols there. In fine, 
they thought that a conventicle of ghouls conducted their 
eulogy on their dislodged possession. Thus apprehended 
superstitious persons, because, occasionally in the deep, dark, 
silent night, the dead of night, the time when screech-owls 
cry and apparitions rise, a peculiar disturbance, like that 
of a ponderous body being dragged through the house, 
from the attic to the cellar, descending three flights 
of stairs, was apparent to active ears. Perhaps it 
was the person’s ghost that came to inspect the rap- 
ing of his bones, as a sequel of his residence. For when eyes 
were sealed in balmy rest, and aching limbs were adjourned 
to mend their morrow’s strength, then that same unnatural 
noise proceeded from unseen artisans. Also, on dismal, dusky, 
dreary days — days thick with gloom, dull with melancholy, 
and dark with clouds — did one’s eyes ascend, during a certain 
hour of the day, to the attic window facing the garden, one 
fancied they could have discerned an old, sad, pale-faced. 


268 


weeping woman peering out into the dank and humid day. 
Rumor reports it the person who discovered the supposed 
soulless remains of the possible tragical Amos Felton many 
years before. Some have even carried this so far as to say 
that the youngest son of the family, on arriving home at the 
enchanting hour of the night, upon a certain time, was met 
in the hall by this selfsame figure of a ghostly woman, who 
descended with a blow upon his back. Inquiry failed to pro- 
cure any evidence concerning this report, from the son so 
attacked. This statement seemed at once absurd, and the 
spark of superstition was eventually extinguished. 


THE END. 


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